


I walk on the road that you started

by silentfort



Series: Scent [2]
Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Alien Biology, Alien Sex, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anthropomorphic, Blood and Violence, Dissociation, Face Reveal, Furry, Major Character Injury, Miscommunication, Nonbinary Character, Other, POV Original Character, Self-Esteem Issues, please read author's notes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:55:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 30,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25571695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silentfort/pseuds/silentfort
Summary: But even with all these other smells, you notice that his has changed. And when he pushes the control to raise the ramp, and the late afternoon sunlight bounces up into the hold, you see it gleam across a new pauldron on his shoulder. A bright silver like steel, but with the same burnished lustre as his helmet.“Since when does the guild pay you in beskar?”Continuing the story from Scent. How would the events of the series be different if Din hadn't been alone?
Relationships: The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)/Original Character(s), The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)/Reader
Series: Scent [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1853215
Comments: 5
Kudos: 19





	1. The Asset

**Author's Note:**

> Won't make much sense if you haven't first read Scent. The tl:dr is that you are Taelir, a leonine alien creature who's fallen in with the Mandalorian. Lionae are an original race so don't worry if they're not familiar to you.
> 
> If you need any clarifications on triggers or content please reach out to me on [Tumblr](acrossthetracksrebounding.tumblr.com).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Din takes a job from a new client. You have a bad feeling about this.

You lean your hip against the hull, watching as the entry ramp lowers with a hiss of hydraulics and a gust of desert air. Sand grits his footsteps as his boots meet the metal. You catch stale alcohol (the cantina), preservatives (ration portions from the market), and that particular metallic smoke from the place he won’t let you follow.

You could find it by scent, if you had to. You’ve not told him, but you’re sure he knows. Just as he knows that you wouldn’t try. Even years later, some secrets are important to keep.

But even with all these other smells, you notice that his has changed. And when he pushes the control to raise the ramp, and the late afternoon sunlight bounces up into the hold, you see it gleam across a new pauldron on his shoulder. A bright silver like steel, but with the same burnished lustre as his helmet.

“Since when does the guild pay you in beskar?” you push away from the wall as he comes closer, reaching out to take the pouch of rations he hands to you.

For a moment he doesn’t answer, just sighs as he subsides onto a crate against the opposite wall. You watch him sidelong, waiting. His scent is muddled and uncertain.

“Not the guild. A downpayment from a client. An Imperial.”

You blink. “Kriff.”

“Yeah.” He doesn’t look up, the helm still tilted toward the floor.

“What in hells are they getting you to hunt?”

The new pauldron lifts and falls in a shrug. “Don’t know. Pretty much all they gave me was a last-known and a tracking fob.”

The fur on the nape of your neck is bristling. But you don’t need to tell him that this doesn’t feel right - you can see just by looking at the tense curve of his spine that he knows it.

“Well,” you lift your chin, try to sound chipper. “Where are we headed?”

He looks at you then, head tilted just a little. “You’ll miss your posting -”

“Ha, no.” You shake your head. “Don’t think you’re just gonna drop me off on some backwater plantation so I can pick fruit while you get yourself neck deep in trouble and have all the fun.”

He laughs softly, a burst of static. “Neck deep in trouble is your idea of fun?”

You lean into his space, smiling just enough to show your teeth. “You know it is.”

His scent is rich on your tongue. The helmet jerks toward the rations in your hand. “Get those put away,” he says in a thick voice as he starts toward the ladder behind you. “What do I pay you for anyhow?”

You swat at his arse as he passes. “You _don’t_ pay me.”

He laughs louder then, swinging up the ladder, and in a few moments you hear the flicking of switches on the forward console and the whine of the engines starting up.

You smile, following him to the upper deck before heading aft to the galley. The engines rumble through the hull, and the latched cupboard doors tremble on their hinges. You flick open one, pull open the storage basket on its rail, and tip in the food. The water tanks are still pretty full from your last stop before Nevarro where you’d been able to buy ice by the brick. Reconstituted ration portions aren’t an entertaining food source, but both of you have had worse, and less, in the past.

The whine-rumble smooths out to a low, humming drone. You switch off the galley light and turn around, heading fore to the storage area that’s since become your bunkspace. It’s little more than a space between one set of doors and the next where you can unroll a mattress, but when the doors are shut it is absolutely dark.

Which is handy.

You straighten the mattress and blankets, folding your legs under you as you sit and wait. Through the open archways you can see the back of his chair silhouetted against stars, his hands flicking through controls as he double checks the navigation to wherever you’re going. Then he leans forward and the engine hum rises in pitch, the pinpricks of stars streaking into the brighter light of hyperspace. His chair turns.

You tilt your head, waiting to see what he’ll do. It’s been years, on and off, since you first started flying with him. Long enough that he’s stopped sleeping in his bunk on the lower deck and long enough for you to get used to living for days at a time with only the dim glow of running lights, long enough that seeing him in full armour and helmet is sometimes the exception, not the rule.

He closes the cockpit door as he comes out, lights from the lower deck controls glancing up the ladder and catching on the new pauldron.

“We’re headed to Arvala-7,” you hear his footsteps come to a halt at the edge of your bed. “Enough travel time for some rest, if you want it.”

Still so reticent. He still struggles to bring himself to ask for things.

“You didn’t want to talk about anything?” you offer, making space for him if he needs it. You can almost hear him mulling over the new bounty, the risks, the complications. The danger of Imperial involvement balanced against the lure of beskar.

“Not right now.”

“Well then,” you lean forward, find his leg in the dark and hook your fingers around the back of his knee. “I’m not tired.”

You’re better at helping him off with the armour, now. He stacks each piece in a neat arrangement between the bed and the wall, out of the way in case either of you has to respond to an emergency. He stops after stepping out of his pants, kneeling in front of you with a hand on your shoulder. He leans closer, sighing, and you nuzzle your cheek into the curls of his hair.

“Can you -”

You cup the back of his head in reply, enfold him carefully in your arms as you turn him, laying him down under you. Even just that is enough to ratchet his heart rate higher, his hands sliding up your chest and gathering in your mane.

You’re aware that your species is on a different scale to most others, with the exception of perhaps wookies. There’s a reason your ancestors were cannon fodder and your life so far has been defined by the labour you could provide. It’s only at moments like this that you delight in that difference, at the way you can bracket his body within your arms, ease your weight down onto him and feel his breath come short as you pin him to the floor. You press your muzzle to the underside of his jaw, tilting his head aside, and he gasps on an inhale as you lap the sweat from his skin.

He hitches one ankle around the back of your knee, shifting his hips against yours. You press closer, grind into him, letting him take what he needs from you.

He smells of desert dust, sweat, butane smoke and the faint traces of other people, other bounty hunters and the other Mandalorians you aren’t supposed to know exist. He smells like desire, and anxiety - distraction.

You let the tips of your claws prick into his shoulders, flick your tongue against the shell of his ear and growl, “ _Focus_ , little one.”

He whimpers at that, grips you tighter and moves faster, and when he comes it’s with his head thrown back and your teeth at his throat.

#

You hold him as he dozes, listening to the Razor Crest breathing around you. Hyperspace sounds somehow liquid, washing over the hull and rippling against the jut of the engines, until you feel like you’re at the bottom of an ocean of darkness. You’ve worked on sea ships before, had a crewmate lay a hand on the hull just above your head and say “The waterline is about here.”

You’re not sure which is worse, the pressure and the threat of water rushing in or the yearning darkness of vacuum ready to suck you out.

He shifts in his sleep as your arm tenses around him, and you press your muzzle against the back of his neck and inhale deeply, trying to focus on the sweat-sex-sleep smell of him. He sighs.

“Can’t sleep?”

“I’m alright,” you murmur. But he turns over in your arms anyway, and you feel his hand against your cheek. He didn’t close the forward doors when he came in, and the controlboard lights from the lower deck are just enough to see the dark shape of him against the paler mattress, and your hand on his chest. “I know better than to ask you if you’re sure about this.”

“I don’t have a choice,” he almost whispers. “Most pucks barely cover fuel.”

You don’t tell him that what you make on work postings - occasional heavy labour, mercenary work - could help with the shortfall. He barely accepts your help to keep the ship running, to feed the two of you. But he needs more to take back to the others.

One day he’ll tell you about them. You can wait until then.

“It’ll be worth it,” he shifts closer, presses his forehead against your collarbone. “The downpayment was one ingot. There’s a full camtono if I get the asset back alive.”

Your hand, stroking down his back, freezes. With that much he could have an entirely new set of armour. Or buy a fleet.

His heart is thudding hard enough for you to feel it in your own lungs. You take a deep breath, and kiss the top of his head.

“Good reason to get some sleep, then.”

#

The desert air that gusts into the hold when he opens the door is cooler than the air when you left Nevarro, but not by much. You shudder, squinting against the last of the sunlight glaring off red rock and orange sand as the heat sears your nostrils. Even in the shade, the ground is uncomfortably warm under your bare footpads. “Once, just once, couldn’t we end up somewhere cool?”

“We were just on Maldo Kreis.” He flips the tracking fob back to silent, tucks it into his belt, and lifts the amban rifle to peer through the scope. “That wasn’t cold enough for you?”

Your muzzle wrinkles and you glance back to the portside landing strut, with the bright silver scrape of tooth marks. “Hard to enjoy the weather when I’m trying not to get my tail bitten off.”

“Speaking of,” he gestures with the point of the rifle. “Might need to find a better landing site, there’s a whole lot of -”

Something roars, and his helmet whips around as a large brown mass comes barrelling around the corner of the ship. You get an impression of a mouth on legs before you hurl yourself at it, throwing your shoulder into a leathery hide to knock it over. It goes down in a cloud of fine sand, leaving you coughing and sneezing as another shape looms in your periphery. You wheeze for breath, feeling the animal under your claws begin to shift and blinking as the other one thuds closer to you. Even from this close both of their scents are just a wall of directionless stench, too alien to read any information and the desert too dry and hot to do more than confuse you.

You think momentarily of the nameless marsh where he found you, where cool breezes blew from uninterrupted horizon to horizon. Or all the places you’ve hunted together since. Tapestries of forested light and shade, orchards thick with perfumed fruit, grasslands warm in the morning sun, the cities where his scent was the one clear bright streak through a crowd of strangers. The scent of sweat and sex in the darkness the night he’d finally told you his name. Din.

But no, it’s in this kriffing desert where you’re useless to him where you’ll die at last.

Electricity crackles and the second beast crumples.

You take the chance to find the browbone of the animal under you and thump it soundly. An eye the size of your fist flutters shut.

“I’m sorry,” you mutter, angry at yourself for being taken unawares, at him having to rescue you when your whole purpose is to protect him.

“What?” you can’t catch his scent over the reek of the creatures, but he sounds confused.

“For this!” you stagger to your feet, stumble away from the fallen animals. “I’m not supposed to be surprised by anything -”

“No one’s perfect,” he seems both reassuring and amused, but you didn’t just have your life flash before your eyes for nothing.

“It’s not funny! I told you I’m useless in deserts, it’s too damn hot and there’s _so much sand_ -” you snarl as the helmet tilts, definitely laughing at you now. “ _Oh kriff you_ -”

“You are… bounty hunters?” asks a new voice behind you. You look over your shoulder to see an ugnaught seated astride another of the animals, a dart gun resting on his shoulder as he waits to be noticed.

“And that guy!” you fling out a hand, “Any decent kriffing planet and I’d have smelt him coming ages ago, but right now I’ve got is a nose full of _sand_ and all I can smell is bitey and his friend down here.”

“They are blurrg,” the ugnaught says, “and they are female.” You turn back to stare at him.

You’re dimly aware that throughout your tirade Din hasn’t quite lowered the rifle. “Who are you?” he asks the ugnaught, calm.

“Kuiil.” The stranger watches you both a moment longer, his mouth working as if he’s thinking. “I will help you.”

#

You help Kuill lash one of the blurrg to his mount, and knot together a makeshift harness to haul the other one yourself. He doesn’t speak to you, perhaps concerned by your outburst before, but when you lean your weight into the rope and begin to pull the unconscious beast across the sand he does give you a satisfied nod.

Ugnaughts were often kept as imperial slaves. Makes sense he would have seen one of your kind before.

After depositing the blurrg into a corral near Kuiil’s dome of a house, the two men go inside. You turn on your heel and head back alone to the Crest.

On the walk back you breathe slowly and deeply, trying to calm down as much as you’re trying to get used to the place. There’s no sound except for the sighing breeze and the skittering of small creatures in the rocks around you. The smell of iron in the red dirt. The mustiness of blurrg on your fur.

There have been jobs in the past where you’ve been the one to negotiate passage with the locals. Sometimes Din didn’t speak the language. The Halosians only respected violence and wouldn’t let you pass until they heard you roaring over the comm. A dozen other people would have been significantly less amenable to a single Mandalorian if not for you drawing yourself to your full height and looming behind him.

But right now you’re not much use to anyone.

When the wind shifts and you catch the cooling engines of the Razor Crest you openly smile with relief.

You throw yourself in the fresher, scrubbing grit out of your undercoat and vacuuming out loose fur until you feel smooth and clean again.

You lay out a portion of food and a flask of water in the lower deck, for when he comes back.

You throw a grey blanket around your shoulders and clamber up to the top of the Crest, perching on the hull as you watch the path back to Kuiil’s vapor farm until the last of the twilight has faded to night. The stars above you are a scatter of unfamiliar constellations, unbearably vivid even to your comparatively weak eyesight.

You wait.

A few hours after dark you see light in the distance, the headlamp on his helmet bobbing in time with his steps.

You lay back, staring up at the stars as you listen to him come up to the ship, go inside. At length he comes out again, and you hear his boots on the service ladder as he climbs up to sit beside you.

There’s a long space of quiet. The air is still a little too dry for you, but what you catch of his scent is troubled.

“So,” the helmet tilts back as he looks up to the stars. “You didn’t want to talk about anything?”

You shiver to hear your own words back from him. And you think maybe you need to, need to figure out why you lost it earlier, why you’ve been so out of it since then, what’s going to happen now with Kuiil and the quarry. But you’re honestly not up to it.

You roll toward him, press your face into his thigh. “Not right now.”

#

The next morning he heads back out to Kuiil’s farm to learn to ride a blurrg, and returns mid afternoon smelling of sweat, sand, frustration, and of course blurrg. He spends the rest of the evening methodically field stripping the blaster and rifle. Going over the circuitry of his armour. Occasionally swearing under his breath in mando’a.

You curl up against the opposite wall of the hold with a pile of mending, trying to get your thoughts in order as your hands work on autopilot. A slice from a blade gradually disappears into a new seam. You snip out the curled and melted edges of a gash from a glancing blaster bolt, pack the gap with fresh padding and stitch down a patch of almost-the-same-colour cloth. The hull of the ship ticks and clicks as it cools from the heat of the day, but you don’t realise it’s full dark again until he puts a portion of food down at your elbow.

You look up. There are crumbs on his sleeve, he must have eaten while he was up in the galley.

“I’m sorry this is taking so long,” he murmurs.

You put the coat down. “It’s not your fault.” You know if he takes the Crest any closer to the quarry he risks warning them away. When he doesn’t know what he’s getting into he has to go on foot. You’ve helped him with that before, either leading him by scent or guarding his back in a fight. But in this desert, you’re more hindrance than help. “I’m sorry there’s not more I can do.”

The helmet tilts. “There is one thing.”

“Oh?”

His gloved hand reaches out, traces the point of your ear. The light glinting from his helmet grows brighter as your pupils dilate.

_“Oh.”_

#

_That night he grips both hands into the arm that’s wrapped around his chest, gasping and trembling as Taelir’s cock slips against his, fucks slowly between his thighs. Teeth rest against the muscle of his shoulder and he focuses on that, on the rasp of a rough hand across his side and hot breath against the back of his head and the long, low whine from deep in their throat as they grip him tight enough to bruise as they come._

#

Even with the side hatch open, you hear them before you smell them. A thunk, then chittering voices, and you scramble to your feet.

But not in time.

#

_When he crests the rise, the pod floating just behind him, he doesn’t immediately register what’s wrong. The Crest is where he left it, dull silver plates glinting in the sun. The only sound is the high, fluting whistle of wind._

_It hadn’t made that noise before._

_He looks again at the ship and sees that the outline is wrong, one of the repeating blasters from the front is missing. What he’d taken for heat haze is sunlight reflecting off sheets of panelling that lie in the dirt around the ship. There are a few lumps of something that might be small bodies. The side hatch is open, but there’s no sign of Taelir._

_He breaks into a run._

_He’s calling out before he’s even in shouting distance, thoughts skittering through worst case scenarios. Taelir’s been taken. Taelir’s been hurt. Taelir’s -_

_No._

_He throws himself up the side access ramp, looking back and forth across the lower deck. Sunlight glares oddly through the gaps in the hull. There’s a heap of dark bloody cloth slumped against one wall._

_He hears a low, animal whine come from the upper deck. He goes still, remembering the story he’d been told about how Taelir injured their hand._

_Hating himself with every movement, he unslings the rifle from his back._

#

You are breathing. Your face is pressed against something hard. Your hands have made fists in something soft. You are breathing.

You smell blood. Some of it’s yours. You’re aware that’s bad.

Some of it’s not. You don’t mind that so much.

You smell sand. And human sweat. There’s something else you don’t recognise but now you’ve noticed the sweat you don’t want to think about anything else. You press your face closer, inhale deeper.

A hand is stroking the back of your head.

“You’re alright.”

His voice is rough. He sounds upset. That’s not good.

You want to answer but making words is entirely beyond you. You try to relax your fists.

“There, there you are. It’s alright.”

Din is holding you, one of his hands stroking soothingly over your fur again and again. Your cheek is pressed against the side of his helmet. You blink, realising that his other arm is caught between your teeth, the durasteel bracer warm against your tongue, and his arm is bent at an angle that has to be uncomfortable for him.

You relax your jaw and let go, forcing yourself to lean back from him, to make space. As you do your claws release fistfuls of shredded blanket.

He slowly lets his arm fall. He flexes his fingers but otherwise doesn’t move.

"Wh-” your throat feels like you’ve drinking sand. You cough and try again. “What happened?”

“From the bodies outside I’m guessing jawas attacked you. You’re hurt.”

There’s a dull ache in your upper arm. You look down and see your fur is streaked in blood, dark red on white. For a long moment you don’t recognise the injury. Not a cut from a knife, not a blaster burn.

A bite. Your own.

“I didn’t hear them until they were right outside,” your voice is like gravel, words halting. “When I came out they shot me with something electric. It knocked me out, I don’t know for how long. When I got up there was a huge vehicle, and they were loading bits of the ship into it. The starboard gun -”

“I know.”

You shake your head, trying to focus. It’s brighter than it should be, but the lights aren’t on. There’s sunlight shafting up through the hatch to the lower deck. What time is it? What day?

“I tried to stop them. They shot me again. When I got up the second time… I did this,” you turn your arm, and there’s a hiss of indrawn breath as he sees the bite clearly for the first time. “I don’t think they were able to stop me after that, but I’m not actually sure what happened.”

His hand clenches in his lap, like he’s checking to see if it works. “I’m not sure what the damage to the ship is. I’m sure it would have been worse if you weren’t here. I’m sorry I didn’t get back sooner.”

“How long were you gone?”

“I left yesterday morning. It’s afternoon now.”

You fold in on yourself, leaning back against the far wall. The jawas had shown up in the evening of the first day. That’s a lot of lost time.

Air shifts, and you catch that strange scent again. Something alive. Your head lifts, nostrils flaring and your pupils flooded. Have they come back?

He lifts a hand to stop you, his shoulders tensing in a wince as the movement causes him pain. Did you hurt him?

“It’s just the quarry, it’s in a pod in the hold. It’s not a threat.”

You are breathing. “What did I do to you?”

He turns his arm, showing you the bracer. “It’s alright. I surprised you. You just bit the metal. It’s not punctured. I can fix it.”

The durasteel is dented, bright scores of silver showing through the red paint. You think of the portside landing strut.

You put your hands over your face.

He gets up. You hear him moving past you, pouring water in the galley. The thunk of a cup set down beside you. Footsteps heading forward to the cockpit. Switches are flicked, and the engine rattles to life, then dies. He swears quietly. Comes back to you.

“We need to get help. Drink something. Then we’ll head to Kuiil’s.” He heads into the galley, closes the door behind him.

You look at the water next to the shredded remains of your bedding, and feel distantly grateful you didn’t destroy anything more important.

#

When you make it to the bottom of the ladder, you can’t bring yourself to look around. There are holes in the ship. The deep-seated wrongness of that claws up your spine, and you struggle to find something else to focus on.

There’s a round, white pod floating in the middle of the hold. It’s open, and empty.

Something coos, and you see a little green head poking out from Din’s old bunk. It’s mostly ears and eyes, which blink at you slowly.

“The asset,” Din says, coming closer to awkwardly pick it up and put it back in the pod. The tiny creature doesn’t look away from you.

“Hi,” you say, stupidly. “So you’re the camtono of beskar.”

The wide ears lift when you speak, and you laugh hollowly.

#

Kuiil offers to help you trade for the stolen ship parts. Din bristles, but you don’t have a lot of options. The child toddles around as you hitch the blurrg to an empty trailer, chasing the fat frogs that have emerged from somewhere. You lift your head, seeing the streaks of cloud across the evening sky and scenting water on the air. Rain. 

It comes just as you set out. Din rides on the trailer, raindrops pinging on his armour. The child is back in its pod, the lid shut and watertight. You walk at the back of your little convoy, breathing deeply and relishing the deluge, water making rivers in the fur of your body, sluicing over your muscles and drenching you to the skin. You couldn’t be wetter if you’d been swimming. The ground beneath your feet has churned to mud but you’re washed clean of blood and dust.

The storm peters out shortly before dawn, which breaks in glorious reds and golds against the last of the clouds. Kuiil looks sidelong at you, sleek with wet and muddy to your knees, and doesn’t comment.

Your fur has mostly dried by mid morning when you find the jawa’s sandcrawler. The rust red thing looms amidst the rocks, with a collection of tents set up against its base like market stalls. Din shifts, and you smell anger. Bits of the _Crest_ are in those piles.

There are high pitched shouts, and the cloaked figures at the base of the sandcrawler scatter into movement. Sunlight glints off weapons.

Din looks over his shoulder. “Maybe you should hang back. Keep an eye on the kid.”

The bite on your upper arm throbs. You exhale slowly. “Sure thing.”

Kuiil keeps riding closer to the sandcrawler, raising an arm in greeting. You turn your back, find a space in the shade where the ground isn’t too muddy, and hunker down to wait. The child leans their hands on the edge of the pod and watches you solemly. They make a questioning noise.

“We gotta wait here, they don’t like me much.”

Another coo.

“To be fair I did kill a couple of them.”

A slow blink. The ears droop as the child’s head tilts.

“Hey, none of that,” you try to smile, pricking your ears up, craning your whiskers forward. “Don’t you go getting sad on me. You’re too kriffing cute.”

They make a surprised noise, reaching out as their ears perk up.

“What is it?” You pick up the child, perch them on one knee.

The little hands reach toward your face. The ears wiggle.

“My ears move like yours, huh?” You touch one of them, then one of the kid’s, gently tracing the edge. They giggle. “I wonder where your folks are, little one. Someone must be worried about you. Is this a rescue mission?”

They just watch you with those huge eyes.

You keep them on your knee and talk about the things you can see, pointing out the little lizards in the rocks, the way the sun glances off puddles. You talk about the things you can smell, how nice the rain smelt last night and how fresh the air is now. There’s more moisture in the air now and it’s easier for you to breathe, easier to relax enough to notice the details about the child. Their pulse is quick, like it would be for any small animal, but they don’t seem stressed, feeling pleasantly warm to the touch as each tiny hand wraps around your thumbs. Their scent makes you think of moss on wood, or frogs, but it’s so different to any creature you’ve seen before. They watch you as you talk, looking at your mouth, your eyes, and especially your ears, which they seem to mirror. You don’t think about the sound of chittering voices from down the hill, or the ache in your arm. The child pats their hand on your wrist and smiles, and you focus on that.

The scent of warm metal gets closer. You climb to your feet and watch as Din walks back across the sand toward you.

“They want me to get something for them.”

#

The mudhorn’s nest turns out to be a hole in the side of a gully. It yawns dark and wide.

“Nothing good can come from something that needs a front door that big.”

“You can head back to the fortress.”

You give him a look.

“You’re still injured. You shouldn’t risk yourself again.”

You stretch your claws, inspect them, and say nothing. It’s pure bravado but thankfully he doesn’t call you on it.

He sighs. “Can you tell if it’s in there?”

You walk across the gully, sidestepping the puddles and the wettest patches of mud. The nest stinks of dirty water and wet clay, old dead things (possibly blurrg), and something hot and acrid that must be the mudhorn. The scent is strong, but you’d expect it to be if the thing lives here.

You get closer to the hollow, listening. The drip of water. Wind sighing over the edge of the gully. You take a step closer. And another, until the shade of the cave falls across you. You close your eyes.

A sound, almost too low for you to hear. You wait a long, long moment, trying to listen past the sound of your pulse.

It’s there again. A heartbeat, slow, like a huge animal asleep.

You head back to Din. “It’s in there.”

“Kriff.”

"Asleep. I think.”

“Hmm,” the helmet tilts.

“I could sneak -”

“No,” he turns back to you quickly. “I can’t see _shab_ from out here and you have worse vision that I do, I’m not sending you in there blind.”

“If I can hear its heartbeat from the entry I’m pretty sure I can figure out where to shove a knife -”

“What did I just say about you being injured?”

“So are you!” the hair rises at the nape of your neck and you register suddenly that it’s true. Yesterday you’d been too shellshocked and last night too distracted by the rain, but now you can smell dried blood and the unpleasant scorch that the cauteriser leaves behind. There’s a hole in his sleeve and new dents in his armour.

He just unslings the rifle, chambering a round while you stare at him and try to remember how to speak. His blurrg is gone too, you realise. He walked all the way back to find the ship gutted because you couldn’t defend it. Even injured he tried to help you, and you attacked him for it. He had to negotiate with jawas because they hated you, and now he’s heading into danger to collect some kriffing _egg_ because you’ve gone and cocked everything up.

He’s holding the rifle out to you and saying something, but your pulse is heavy in your ears and you can’t focus. He turns away, toward the cave, and then you recognise the noise you’re hearing. Footsteps. Getting faster.

You grab his arm, “It’s awake -” but your grip is harder than you intended and he drops the rifle.

Something enormous lumbers out of the cave, something shaggy and mud covered and reeking of anger. The horn is as long as Din is tall. It turns its head, squinting at you with milky white eyes, and bellows.

Din drops to one knee, snatches up the rifle and brings it to his shoulder. It clicks. Jammed.

You don’t wait to see what he does next. You charge, the claws on your bare feet digging deep into the earth as you hurtle toward the mudhorn and it starts to charge toward you. It lowers its head and you launch yourself, slamming into its skull with enough force to knock the air from your lungs. It stamps its feet, tossing its head. You grip the muddy fur with both hands and kick, aiming for its eye.

You can’t find it. It bellows again, the sound of it overpowering, and rears onto its back legs. When it comes down with a shuddering crash you lose your grip on the slick fur, sliding down the side of the massive head. You scrabble for purchase, then liquid gushes over your hand as your claws sink into an eye. But first it manages to catch your other arm in its mouth.

You register pressure, then your brain whites out.

_Taelir roars. Or screams. The mudhorn throws its head, flinging them across the gully like a rag doll._

_The white body twitches. The arm is already dark with blood._

_He drops the rifle and snatches his blaster from its holster, firing from the hip. The mudhorn jerks, then turns to him, a growl like thunder echoing off the rocks._

_But it’s not an echo. The mudhorn turns its head as something slams into its side, howling, clawed hands gripping and rending. One arm flails as if it has too many joints, and from here he can’t tell if that flash of white is fur or protuding bone, but the mudhorn is roaring in pain and finally the noise gets through to him. Taelir’s still alive and they need help._

_Din fires again, and again, but the bolts barely do more than fizzle against the mud encrusted hide. He drops the blaster and draws his vibroknife from his boot. HIs gloves are slippery with mud and he scrubs his palm on his thigh, taking the knife in a firmer grip._

_The mudhorn is bucking, shifting sideways to shake the creature that’s attacking it. It turns again, throws its weight against the cliff. There’s another roar, but he can’t see Taelir._

_The mudhorn’s blind eye is facing Din. He moves in, knife raised, thrusting hard into the base of the neck, and is yanked from his feet as the beast lurches forward, head dropped and lowing in pain. He lets go of the knife and stumbles back, reaching again for the blaster - maybe it’ll work better at this range, into the open mouth - but he dropped it on the other side of the gully._

_He backs off as the beast turns its horn toward him, snorting. The far side of its shoulder, neck, and face is in ribbons, stripped raw and dark with blood. He can see the jawbone. Its breath steams in gusts. There’s no sign of Taelir._

_He feels something close around the back of his neck and he’s ripped from his feet, hurled bodily aside. He skids backward as he lands, struggling up on his elbows to see Taelir facing down the mudhorn, lungs heaving for breath, head lowered and legs bent in a crouch. Their teeth are bared._

_The mudhorn thunders again. Paws the ground. Charges._

_It seems to slam into an invisible wall, lowing in confusion as its feet make gouges in the mud. Din stares._

_Taelir doesn’t hesitate, leaping for the shredded side of its neck and grappling, their intact arm reaching under the jaw and ripping back through the thick fur. Blood gushes from the torn jugular. The mudhorn’s remaining eye rolls back, it staggers, and falls in a slump to the side, pinning Taelir to the ground._

_Din climbs slowly to his feet. Walks closer. Under the weight of the mudhorn’s head Taelir is yowling and thrashing. Their lips are drawn back from long fangs, their pupils flooded until the rust red of the iris is almost invisible. When they see him, they snarl._

_There’s no recognition. This isn’t the muted dissociation of yesterday. His friend simply isn’t here. Nothing looks back at him from that horribly blank gaze except rage and a fathomless hunger to kill._

_The growling resonates around the gully._

_Din can’t move. He knows what he should do. He should walk away, pick up the rifle, bring it back here and -_

_No._

_The growls rise in pitch, the creature is squirming, trying to get free of the mudhorn._

_He can’t outrun them. The blaster won’t be enough. He needs the disintegrator rounds of the amban rifle, nothing else will do it. But he can’t make himself move._

_One arm gets free, flailing brokenly toward him. It’s caught by some invisible force._

_The child is standing beside and just behind him, a tiny hand outstretched and their eyes closed in peaceful concentration._

_Taelir howls. The arm spasms, the shattered end of a bone sliding wetly through ravaged flesh, clicking almost audibly into place. Muscles realign, gashes in torn skin gradually seam into new scars. The arm flops limply to the ground, and the child tips over backward._

_The silence, after so much chaos, is deafening._

Something heavy is holding you down. Your mouth is full of blood and dirt. Din is standing above you, scent totally unreadable.

“What happened?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanted write anthro smut but then this fucking thing got away from me.
> 
> Halosians are not from the Star Wars universe. But I can have a little Farscape reference, as a treat.


	2. The Child

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dealing with the mudhorn was one thing, but what's to be done about everyone else who's tracking the child?

From your right shoulder to the wrist the drying blood is a vivid red, while your left arm is dark to the elbow with gore. As is most of your body and legs. You’re a patchwork of mud and blood, not a bit of white fur left on you, not even on your face.

Being trapped under something that big as it bleeds out apparently has consequences.

Kuiil glances sideways to where you keep trudging pace with his blurrg. “What happened?”

The words, after what feels like hours of silence, startle you. You flick an ear back toward where Din rides on the heavily laden trailer. He’d helped you haul yourself out from under the fallen mudhorn, trekked back to the sandcrawler, and traded the egg for the stolen ship parts, all without a word to you. You’d wanted to ask for an explanation, for him to say something, but the longer he remained silent the more impossible it became to talk. You’d asked him what happened and he didn’t answer you. So how bad must it have been?

You can’t tell what he’s feeling. You don’t think he’s afraid of you. But it’s hard to smell anything over the stink of death on your own body.

“I don’t know,” you say to Kuiil. “I don’t remember much after the mudhorn came out of its cave.”

“You attacked it.” Din’s voice is rough. “It crushed your arm.”

That explains why you can smell your own blood. You look at your arm, dazed. But there’s so much.

“Then how are you alive?” Kuiil squints at you, heavy brows furrowed.

You shrug. Your ears are laid back.

“The child.”

You look over your shoulder to Din. The white pod is floating alongside him in the trailer, silent. The kid is passed out cold.

Kuiil frowns. “I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I,” Din says flatly. “The kid held out a hand then… they were healed.”

You wrap your arms around yourself, shivering. You can feel the seams of fresh scars through the bloody fur.

“Hm,” Kuiil grunts. “Then you were both saved.”

You look at him again and find him gazing evenly back at you, calm. He holds eye contact for a long moment, then nods and looks away.

He’d never asked what you were, you remember, as if he’d seen lionae before. And then to calmly ride alongside one that was so obviously drenched in its own blood - head reeling, you quickly reevaluate the ugnaught’s courage.

Din doesn’t speak again.

#

You unload the trailer into the sand beside the _Crest_ , reams of cabling and sheets of hull plating that lie curled like immense fruit peelings. When Din finds the contents of the weapons store tossed roughly into a crate, he almost snarls under his breath.

“You,” Kuiil appears at your elbow. “You can come and help me. We will need things from my farm.”

But when you get there he simply points you toward the storage tanks of water near one of the outbuildings. “Wash,” he grumbles, and you could sob in relief.

You return to the _Crest_ with a trailer full of scaffolding, tools, lights and a generator, and set to work. The child sleeps in the pod. Din doesn’t speak to you. You work together as automatically as ever, his hand there with the wrench you need just as you look for it, or your arms there to support the panel he’s welding before he asks. Each of you talk to Kuiil as you need to, muttered requests or discussions on the next task that needs doing, but that’s it. The ugnaught looks from one of you to the other, white brows low over his eyes, and doesn’t comment.

You almost wish he would. You’re able now, over the searing of hot metal and the slick of engine grease, to catch Din’s scent. And it’s still unreadable. You’re grateful there’s no sour chill of fear. No anger. But you’re not sure what _is_ there, besides the muddle of confusion.

It’s dawn before the _Crest_ is whole again, every seam and split of her repaired. There’s no way to know if she’s properly airtight until you're out of atmo, but you’ve done the best you can.

Kuiil stumps down the side ramp and clambers onto his blurrg. He raises a hand in farewell. “Good luck with the child. May it survive and bring you a handsome reward.”

You don’t know why, but the fur stands up on the nape of your neck.

#

In the dark space between the galley and the cockpit, you fold the shredded remnants of your blanket. The damage is too extensive to repair. But you’ll make something else out of it, even just bandages. Nothing gets wasted in a life like this.

Clicks and switches from the cockpit. It’s so quiet you can hear the difference in electronic hum when he turns off the navigational display. But even listening as closely as you are, you still somehow jump when his boots stop at the edge of your mattress.

“We need to talk.”

You hold the bunched up blanket in your arms, and nod.

He sits down, looks off to the side, and sighs. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Should… should I go? I have credits, you can leave me on Nevarro -”

“What?” the helmet snaps back to you. “What are you talking about?”

“Isn’t that what this is about? You don’t want me around anymore?”

“No.” He keeps speaking after that, but you lose a few of the words in the rush of blood in your ears. “- the kid. It saved your life. And I don’t know what the client wants with it.”

You make some sound to show you’re listening. But words won’t come.

“Hey,” he reaches out, hooks gloved fingers into your clenched fist. His hand only trembles a little. “You’re alright.”

“You keep saying that,” you manage. “I’m really not.”

You hear the static of an inhale, but it seems he doesn’t know what to say. But what is there to say? He’s not meant to be looking after you. It should be the other way around. Years you’ve been together, and never before have you managed to kriff things up so badly.

He’s never seen you like that. He never should.

There’s a coo, and the child is clambering into your lap like this is a totally normal thing to be doing. Like they haven’t been unconscious for almost a day. Dark eyes look up at you and the ears lift.

You realise yours are flat against your head, and you relax them with an effort. When you do, the child trills happily.

Din sighs, “It’s this thing here.” He lets go of your hand, and although he doesn’t touch the kid his fingers stretch for a moment as if he wants to. But he puts his hand on his knee. “I’m supposed to just drop it off. Take the payment. No questions asked.” The helmet doesn’t move but you can feel his gaze on you. “But they saved your life.”

The child holds your finger and thumb in their hands, watching your face with a faint smile. You think of the jagged crisscrossing of scars down your arm, the faint ache deep within as of bones recently healed. Din said the mudhorn crushed your arm. You can’t remember it happening, but you remember the size of the creature, the weight of its jaw, the teeth like something prehistoric. Any injury from something that big should have killed you. You have no idea how the kid brought you back from that.

“I owe them a debt,” you murmur.

The ears dip a little, the smile fades. Are they disappointed?

“As do I.” Din’s voice is as soft as yours, but somehow warmer. You guess that makes sense, since you’d been feral you might have killed him. But he says it as if he means something else.

“Can we not just - not go back?” you ask, changing the subject.

Din shakes his head. “There was a bounty droid after the kid as well, and I ran into a crew of trandoshan hunters on the way back to the ship. I have to assume there are other fobs out there.”

You swallow the bile that threatens to rise in your throat. He’d been attacked even on the way back from collecting the quarry and you hadn’t realised. You’d been too out of it after failing to defend the -

“You’ve been pulling that face a lot lately,” he puts his hand on your forearm. It's shaking less now. “What does it mean?”

“I should have been able to defend you. I’ve only gotten you hurt -”

“Hey,” his fingers tense. “You said the moment we landed that deserts are bad places for you. It wasn’t your fault. None of this shab has been your fault.”

The urge to argue is almost a reflex, but you’re interrupted by the child wriggling in your lap, babbling insistently. When you look down, confused, they finish their speech and pat your arm with a tiny hand.

“There, see?” Din leans back, his tone light. Even if it’s forced, you appreciate the effort. “Even the kid agrees. Now,” he pushes himself to his feet, walks past you into the galley. “We should eat, and get some rest, and then figure out a plan.” He opens cupboards, finds himself a flask of water and a packet of food. “Can you feed the kid while I eat?”

“Sure.”

“Thanks,” as he passes you again, he reaches out to clap you on the shoulder. Hesitates. Then does it anyway.

#

_When he comes out of the cockpit again, the aft end of the deck is in total darkness. He counts three steps. Lifts one hand and finds the door frame to the storage space. One more step, then he scuffs his boot across the floor to find the edge of the mattress._

_“Is the kid awake?”_

_The low voice rumbles quietly from the darkness, “No.”_

_He bites his lip, thinking. If they wake up, it’s unlikely the kid’s nightvision is good enough to see much. If he were being strict, he’d sleep in his own bunk. But he’s not up to being a good Mandalorian right at this moment._

_He sits and begins to unbuckle his armour, piece by battered piece. Scored by vibroblades, pocked by blaster hits he wasn’t quick enough to dodge. Part of his backplate is crumpled after being hurled bodily by Taelir. He needs time to repair it again, to shore up what he can with sealant and tape and hope it’ll hold for one more fight._

_Finally he’s down to his helmet. He sets it neatly beside the new beskar pauldron - the only other piece that’s entirely undamaged - and turns._

_He’s always surprised by how much more immediate Taelir’s breathing is when it’s not played through speakers. It’s easier to tell where they are, and from the hitch as he reaches out to them they’re still on edge._

_He doesn’t know how to fix that. He can weld, rig, or batter pretty much any part of the_ Razor Crest _back into working order. Has kept his armour limping through three more years than it should have done. Most of his weapons he modded himself._

_But feelings? Not a clue._

_All he can do is find Taelir’s crooked hand in the dark, link their fingers together, and hope._

#

The countdown to your arrival on Nevarro has a scant few hours left and you’re no closer to figuring out what to do.

“Tell me again,” you look over the scatter of tools, cutlery, and scrap metal spread between crates in the lower deck, modelling the key points of the town. “The client’s place is here?”

“Yes,” Din gestures with one of the metal sticks he uses for cleaning the barrels of longer blasters. “I usually leave the _Crest_ here, so you’ve seen the market and the common house at this end of town, but the safe house was up this way,” the stick moves toward a row of empty tins, “where there’s less foot traffic.”

The child coos, reaching out for the plate that marks the shipyard. You scoop them up, hold them in the crook of one arm and gesture with the other. “There are tunnels underneath the town, right? Do you know if there are any that would pass under that building?”

Din has gone stiff. “I don’t know of any tunnels.”

You find your ears dipping at the flat tone of his voice. Of course, if his tribe has stayed hidden all this time they might well be underground. But there’s no time to be careful.

“I know there are others. You've never mentioned them but you go there every time we’re back on Nevarro.”

He doesn’t look at you, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You came back with a new pauldron last time. Made of beskar. Not just any blacksmith can make something like that.”

“I don’t -”

You grit your teeth. “The person you spend the most time with is female, a little older than you, and she wears animal fur but it’s been dead a long time so it’s hard to tell what kind. I assume she’s the blacksmith but I don’t recognise the chemical makeup of the fuel for the forge.”

He was already stiff, now he goes impossibly still.

“I’m not an idiot,” you continue, softer, “and neither are you. You had to know I knew they were there.” When he doesn’t answer you hold the child a little closer, seeking comfort in the warmth against your side. “I’ve never looked for them, and I wouldn’t unless I thought you were in trouble. They’re not what this is about.” You nod in the direction of the client’s compound again. “I’m just trying to think of how we can take out a safe house worth of Imperials by ourselves.”

The helmet turns slowly toward you. He breathes in, a hiss of static. “What if… it wasn’t just us?”

#

You shake out the cloak, slinging it over your shoulders and fastening the straps across your chest and behind your back. You hitch the belted cutoffs a little higher on your hips. It’s been a while since you needed to wear clothing, when it’s just Din and you on the ship your shaggy fur is cover enough, and on Arvala-7 you never got around to getting your things out of storage. Now even just pants and a cloak feels weirdly restrictive.

On the other hand, there’s pockets. Pockets are great.

The _Crest_ settles heavily onto her landing gear, the engines whining to silence. Din’s boots come down the ladder beside you.

“You remember where I showed you?” even through the helmet he sounds concerned.

“Of course.”

“Maybe we should be doing this the other way around.”

“No,” you shake your head. “Town is crawling with other hunters and they could all be looking for you. It’s not safe, even without the kid.”

The child, on Din’s hip, babbles something. They’re staring wide eyed at you, but you suppose that makes sense. They’ve not seen you dressed like this before. You lift your ears, smiling, and they trill.

Din hands you a comlink and you clip it to your belt. And a small piece of metal, that you slip into your pocket. “Stay in touch, alright?”

“Will do.” You want to make a joke about him keeping an eye out for jawas, but the words stick in your throat. Instead you turn, press the control for the side access, and head out across the fields of volcanic ash.

Your white feet are grey to the knee within minutes. The plain stretches out around you, featureless except for jumbles of rock and occasional seams of vibrantly red magma. The township itself is just over the horizon, seeming subsumed by the volcanic hills around it. Whether the town was dug in to the hills, or an older settlement was swallowed up by an eruption, you’re not sure. Maybe both.

You smell it before you hear it. The distinctive stench of too many people in not enough space with not enough fresh water. Then the burbling hum that’s made up of voices, speeder engines, machinery and tools and footsteps. People living. The first thing you see are the scatter of ships left in the fields just beyond the town’s limits, rising up against the horizon long before the semi-buried buildings are discernable from the hills.

When you enter the town you get a few looks. It’s late evening by now and the market stalls are empty except for a few people trying to sell street food as dinner, but other than someone holding out a leg of monkey-lizard in your face and chattering about the price, people largely ignore you once they’ve noted you.

You count the buildings as you pass. Take one turning, then come back onto the main street three blocks later. Double back. You concentrate on seeming to wander aimlessly, thumbs hooked through your belt, slowly making your way toward your objective. You breathe slowly, trying not to let your ears swivel back too often as you listen for footsteps behind you.

Finally you duck your head under the curtained archway and amble along a dusty hall that smells mainly of metal. You don’t get far before the barrel of a blaster is pressing into your spine.

“I think you’re lost, friend.”

You stay relaxed. You can smell human, fear, durasteel. And beskar. You’re in the right place. Slowly, you hold your empty hands out to the sides so the person behind you can see them past your cloak. “Din sent me. There’s a mythosaur pendant in my right front pocket if you want to check.”

“Is he in trouble?”

“No, but he does need your help.”

“Stay here. There are eyes on you and you’ll be shot if you move. Understand?”

You suppress a shiver at that. Would they go straight for disintegrator rounds? You’d rather not find out. “I can wait.”

Movement, then the blaster is gone. You stay exactly where you are, still keeping your hands visible and your breathing slow. That chemical smoke scent is stronger. You smell metal, ammunition. Men and women. Children. Somehow you didn’t think about their being children here.

Does that change anything? No, but it does make this next conversation that much more important.

At length you hear footsteps ahead of you, and two Mandalorians appear. One is large for a human, with dull blue and yellow armour and a heavy blaster slung over his shoulder. The other is smaller, about Din’s size, although she is far more commanding. There’s a hammer hanging from her belt, but she carries no other weapons. The Armourer.

“Who are you?” she asks.

“A friend of Din. He sent me ahead to ask you for your assistance.”

The man glances at the woman, his shoulders tense and one hand lifting to gesture at you. “That _coward_ -”

You grit your teeth, but the woman takes a step toward you before you can speak. “He told you of our location?”

“Only after he found out I already knew it.” Strictly speaking that’s not the truth, but it’s close enough as far as you’re concerned.

“Hm,” she tilts her head, regarding you. “This is not a conversation for entryways. Come along.”

She turns on her heel and the man has no choice but to get out of her way.

You hold your head down as you’re led underground, trying to keep your ears clear of the pipes and cables on the ceiling of one tunnel after another. You can hear whispered voices, movement behind closed doors and down other halls, but you don’t look around. They’re concealing their numbers, or trying to. That’s only fair.

“In here,” she shows you into a large room with a circle of low chairs. You enter and watch as she and the man follow you in, him staying by the closed door while she chooses a seat facing you. The room seems designed for many more people than this. But there aren’t many of them left. “Now,” she rests her fists on her knees. “What prevents Din returning here himself and what kind of assistance does he need?”

You glance at the chairs, but instead take up position on your haunches facing her. Din had only referred to her by her title, but you’d heard the respect in his voice. You’ll do your best to show it yourself. As it is, you’re still tall enough to look her in the eye. “The last bounty was a child. He doesn’t want to return them to Imperial custody, especially when they saved my life. Both our lives.”

The gold helmet tilts. “How could a child have done that?”

You concentrate on breathing. You knew you were going to have to talk about this but it’s still raw in your mind. “Do you know of lionae?”

A minute shake of the head.

“My race was engineered to be soldiers. When we are injured we… continue to fight until death. On Arvala-7 we were fighting a mudhorn.” Distantly you’re aware she’s made some sound of interest, but you keep talking. “My arm was crushed, the child healed it.”

“Hm,” she looks at you for a long moment. “It is well that he does not want to give them up to the Empire. But what does he expect us to do?”

“Evacuate the covert. And help us clear out the Imperial safe house.”

#

_The child is staring at him. He’s staring at the comlink on the table between them._

_The child coos. Reaches for the comlink._

_He snatches it back just as it crackles to life._

_“Taelir?”_

_The voice of the Armourer comes back to him. “Your friend is here. Someone will be at the rendezvous to meet you by the time you arrive.”_

_Then nothing. He’d expect nothing less, any transmission from the covert is inviting risk._

_“Back in your pod, ad’ika,” he lifts the child awkwardly. “We’ve got a long walk.”_

_When they finally make it to the mouth of the underground river they’re met by the rumble of a speeder and a sneering laugh from Paz._

_“So you’ve finally grown a spine, I hear,” the bigger man says as Din clambers onto the flatbed behind him. “Going Imp hunting?”_

_Din flicks his wrist and gestures the pod into the speeder beside him. The child lifts their ears, giggling._

_“Something like that.”_

#

You ease the third bolt silently from its housing and line it up next to the others on the ferrocrete ridge above the grate. As you settle the wrench around the last bolt you take a moment to listen, eyes closed.

One human breathing in the doorway on the other side of this room. Two sets of boots walking the hallway beyond. A muzzle-wrinkling smell of grimy plastoid composite amongst the heavy layer of dust, and the muted scents of crated supplies. Ammunition. Spices. Dried meat. One of the barrels in the left hand corner is full of root vegetables that have started to turn bad.

You open your eyes as you unfasten the last bolt. The grate is hidden from view, but if the trooper you can smell in the doorway was actually doing his job this might not be possible.

A gloved hand touches the end of your tail, the only part of you easily reached in this narrow space. You nod. It’s time.

Moving slowly, you slip your claws through the grate. Brace your knee on the floor of the vent shaft, and lift the slab of metal out of its frame.

Dust shifts, and you freeze. The heartbeats in the tunnel behind you have ticked up just a little faster, but there’s no movement from across the room. 

One after another, you, Din, and the other two Mandalorians slip into the storeroom. You move left, leaning the grate silently against the wall as the others scatter into the shadows. You’re just lifting the dark hood over your white fur again when you hear the hiss of Din’s grapple line, and the trooper by the door stumbles backwards into Lotu’s vibroknife. Jas helps to catch the body, and the two younger Mandalorians shift it out of sight among the crates.

The big male, Paz, had been pissed when he found out he couldn’t come on this mission. But Din had insisted the fewer of you, the better. Just enough to get the job done, then melt into the shadows again. And from what you’d seen of Paz’s reaction, stealth was not his strong suit.

Din glances over his shoulder as you appear at his side. He raises a hand to eye level and signs, _Where?_

You tilt your head, listening to movement from your right. _Two, that way. More beyond._ Your ear swivels at a stilted voice from the other direction, one human male giving terse instructions to another. You make the sign for glasses and trace a circle on your chest for the client’s Imperial medallion, _That way_.

He nods, and gestures you back as the patrol comes closer. You press your palms against the bare ferrocrete wall, listening. Booted footsteps get louder. You watch him for your signal, waiting for that unconscious incline of his helmet.

You step out as one. His knife thrusts up under the edge of one white helmet, and your claws sink through plastoid composite as you snap the other’s neck. There’s a ribbon of fear from Lotu as you pull the corpses out of sight, but Jas’ heart is beating strongly and her hand is steady on her blaster.

You spare a moment to look at Din as he takes a step down the hall. He nods. And you turn your back on them.

#

“I hardly expect you to carry on an equal part to this conversation, Doctor,” the stilted voice continues. “But you must admit that there is precious little entertainment in a locale such as this. One must make do with what one has.”

The scientist makes some weak sound of agreement and drains his glass. When he reaches out to refill it his hand trembles, and when he picks up the carafe to find it empty it shakes a little more.

The old Imperial sneers. “Not only are the hired muscle useless for conversation, they frighten away all but the most inept staff,” he waves a hand dismissively. “Refill it yourself, no one else is liable to this time of night.”

The scientist gets up from the table and inches away to refill his glass from the sideboard across the room. He turns.

The glass shatters on the floor.

You release the Imperial’s throat with a wet sound, spitting the mess across his expensive robes as you straighten slowly. It’ll take forever to get the blood out of your clothes and the taste out of your mouth, but sometimes the image is the thing.

From the wet stain spreading across the scientist’s trousers, it’s having the necessary effect.

“I thought he’d never shut up,” you smile, showing your teeth.

He crumples to the floor, arms over his head. Whimpers something.

“What was that?” You step around the table, leaning down as you get closer. He shudders violently. “Didn’t quite catch it.”

“There are credits -” one brown hand waves vaguely at a doorway behind you. It smells like the Imperial back there, old man and sickly perfumes and musty clothes, but there’s an undercurrent of beskar. “Whatever you want, just take -”

“I was after information,” he opens his eyes to find your face a handsbreadth from his, and yelps. “The asset. How many other fobs did you give out?”

“You -” brown eyes sharpen behind the clouded glass spectacles. “You found it? Is it -?”

You show your red teeth again, and he flinches back.

“I don’t know how many,” he covers his face at your snarl. “But he has the central one,” he makes an abortive gesture toward the corpse in the armchair, “Karga said once it was switched off the others would deactivate,” his voice trails into another whimper.

You pat down the old corpse’s pockets. Inside the formal coat you find a square of metal with a blinking light and a folded antenna. You clip it to the back of your belt.

“I suggest that you stay where you are for, oh, at least until morning.” You glare at the scientist, but he doesn’t look up at you. You’re not sure about this. You feel like you shouldn’t be leaving loose ends. But the Armourer was emphatic. No killing of non combatants except for the client. “You might hear some noises outside. It would not be in your interest to investigate.”

He huddles smaller and doesn’t move.

In the bedchamber you find two camtonos, scenting heavily of beskar, and a mostly empty pouch of miscellaneous coinage. You gather them up and leave, stepping over the crying man as you walk out the door.

#

The first thing Din does is switch off the tracking fob, then he crushes it under his boot.

By the time you’ve made it back to the covert the tunnels are almost entirely empty. The Armourer takes the heavier container from you, breaking it open with a surgical strike of her hammer, and the Mandalorians around the forge fall reverently silent.

One ingot made a new pauldron. There are twenty here. And from the smell of it, more in the other container.

The child watches with huge eyes. You'd been worried how they might react to the blood splashed across your chest, but (unlike Lotu) they’re not afraid of you at all. In some ways that’s more worrying.

“New armour would be befitting of your station,” the Armourer murmurs to Din.

He tilts his head. “Do we have time?”

“You killed all of them, did you not?”

“All except the doctor,” Din looks to you for confirmation.

You smile grimly. “He won’t be going anywhere until morning.”

“Well then,” the Armourer nods to herself, opening a cabinet on the wall behind the forge. “Jas, kindly keep watch. Lotu, assist with the boats.”

The younger Mandalorians fade away in silence. You find a space to sit against the wall, one hand on the edge of the child’s pod, and watch.

She works without speaking, melting down ingots and pouring them into new forms, folding and shaping with her tongs in the flames. Sparks flash against the dull grey walls. When the power hammer comes down in a shower of light and noise, you marvel at the soundproofing that must line this room.

Din is tense at your side. You try to gauge what he’s feeling, but it’s hard to get much past the choke of iron in the air and in your mouth. Perhaps he’s excited for the new armour. Perhaps he’s anxious to leave. As each piece is completed the Armourer exchanges it for his old gear, and piece by piece he’s transformed.

It feels like a long time later when the Armourer sets down her hammer. “It is close to dawn. It is best that you three be gone by daybreak.”

“How will I find the new covert?” Din stands. He’s gleaming silver and blue like a storm cloud, but something in the set of his shoulders seems tired.

The gold helmet looks pointedly at you, then back to him. “Someone will be in contact at a later time. And I trust you will not bring strangers into our midst again.”

He stands a little straighter, but doesn’t say anything to defend you. You think of how you look, a hulking bloodstained shadow, and understand why. Who’d want to take you home to their family?

Din nods, then gestures with one hand and the pod hums along behind him as he sweeps out of the room.

“Lionae,” the Armourer says as you get up. “Understand that I do not speak thus to be cruel. Until one becomes a Mandalorian, there are things you will not be privy to.”

You’re suddenly exhausted. You haven’t slept more than an hour or two since fighting the mudhorn and that feels like weeks ago, the flood of adrenaline from taking the safe house has long since passed, and you stink of blood again. It’s worse when it’s human. You think maybe she’s trying to get at something but right now you just can _not_ understand it.

You just nod, turn, and follow Din.

#

“So where to next?” you ask him as he swings up the ladder to the cockpit.

“We’re laying low,” he calls back.

Great. That means finding somewhere out of the way, usually the shabbier the better. You _hate_ laying low.

While he’s going through the pre-flight check you stand at the bottom of the side access ramp and dunk a canister of water over your head to wash out the blood. The child claps their hands and shrieks as if you’re the funniest thing they’ve ever seen.

Maybe this won’t be as bad as it usually is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me before writing this: i know nothing about star wars and i don’t care to learn  
> me two chapters later with a mando’a dictionary, a dozen pages of wookiepedia open, four episodes of the show running at once and a schematic of the Razor Crest: …okay FINE


	3. The Escape

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taelir and Din head for the edge of the Outer Rim, and end up on a planet called Sorgan. Taelir climbs a tree. The child gets a name.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's odd to realise how many 'bad guys' get killed in a show that's rated PG, and how dark a story gets once those deaths are treated seriously.

You land on Gamorr just long enough to dig up and spend your last cache of Calamari flan. Din leans on the shop counter talking with the heavily-tusked owner while you and her assistant load the speeder with whatever food will last the longest. You’re not looking forward to weeks’ worth of pickled lamta and jerky, but time limits your options.

“Where would you recommend for fuel?” Din asks, posture relaxed. “I’ve got a long way to travel, I want to make sure I get the best rate.” One upside of always wearing a helmet is that it’s harder for people to tell when he’s lying.

“Glufnic will help you out, closest building to the shipyard.” The shopkeeper grins unpleasantly, “Traders, are you?”

Din spins a coin idly on the countertop. “Sure. Thought we’d head trailing-wise toward Molavar.”

“Travelling with family?”

The child, sitting next to Din on the countertop, coos.

Din hesitates just a fraction too long. “No.”

You overcorrect your expression and look back at Din, smiling broadly. “All done out here.”

He straightens, leaving the coin he was playing with on the counter. “Thanks for the tip,” he nods to her.

“Sure,” she swipes the coin.

You feel faintly ridiculous as you scoop the kid up in your arm, but a certain amount of paranoia never hurt anyone. If you throw enough hints that you’re running in one direction, then hopefully anyone looking for you won’t know to go in the other.

When Din is refuelling the Crest and Glufnic is helping you roll as many spare canisters as you could afford into the hold, you prattle on about how you’d always wanted to travel to the core worlds, how now you’d finally made it big maybe you could make it all the way to Coruscant. Glufnic eyes the child watching you both from their pod, and makes a noncommittal grunt.

When the doors are finally sealed and you’re unobserved again, you let your muzzle wrinkle in distaste. “The only person we left alive was the scientist, and he’s going to be too scared to look for us.”

“Better to make sure,” Din mutters, sounding as on edge as you feel.

You glance at the child, who stares back at you.

#

You curl up in the pilot’s chair. The blue light of the navigation display makes a halo around the child’s head where they sit in your lap, watching your hands with interest.

“See, here’s where we just were,” you find Gamorr, a largish dot on the eastern edge of the galactic map. “We told the shopkeeper we were going to Molavar,” you trace your claw tip trailing-wise along the Triellus trade route to another bright spot, “and we told the weapons merchant that we were going to Tatooine, which is here,” another spark in the darkness. “But I also told the fueller we’d head toward the core. The fastest route that way is to take the Corellian run, probably from Christophsis,” you flick your fingers and the map pulls out, the hyperspace route highlighted in green all the way from the outer rim to the core.

The child babbles curiously.

“Yes, that’s right,” you nod sagely. “We’re not doing any of that.”

“Mrrble?”

“What are we doing instead?” You zoom back in to the outer rim, just beyond the edge of Hutt space. “Going as fast as we can in the other direction, at least for a bit. There are more planets out on the edge than are on this map, there’ll be somewhere we can hide out for a little while.”

“Boor-pah.”

“Oh really? Well, what do you think we should do?”

“Pah!” the child looks up at you, the stars reflected in dark eyes. They wave their hand.

“I don’t know about that,” you trace the shape of one ear with your fingertip. “Where would we get a tauntaun at this hour?”

The tiny hand continues to reach for the shiny ball on the end of the throttle.

“Hmm, best not,” you turn the child in your lap, wondering how to distract them. You don’t have anything resembling toys on board, short of giving them some jerky to teethe on. As they shift you feel a lump in your pocket, and remember you still have Din’s mythosaur pendant. You pull it out, dangle it awkwardly from the cord. “Is this a fitting substitute?”

The kid catches the metal shape, and promptly sticks one end in their mouth.

“I really should have seen that coming.”

“We’re not exactly used to children,” comes Din’s voice from behind you.

“Sorry,” you turn the chair, one hand supporting the kid’s back as their teeth clink against the beskar. “I’ll make them something else later.”

He shrugs one shoulder, settling into the starboard passenger seat. You’re still not used to the brighter gleam of his armour. “It’s alright. There’s something I wanted to talk to you about first.”

You try not to stiffen too obviously. You think of coming back from the safe house with your face smeared with blood, of knowing about the other Mandalorians for years without telling him, of the mudhorn. Of dead jawas in the sand and your teeth leaving gouges in Din’s armour. There are so many things you’ve done wrong, lately.

“The Armourer left a message for me. About the kid.”

You take a breath. Not what you expected.

“She said our songs tell of battles between Mandalore the Great and an order of sorcerers called Jedi,” his helmet faces the child, his scent is troubled. “She said the kid must be one of them.”

“When we first met you asked me if I was a sorcerer, if I was reading your mind,” your ears dip as you frown. “Are you saying the kid can do that?”

“I don’t know. I know they stopped a charging mudhorn without touching it. I know they healed a wound that should have killed you,” the helmet tilts as the child babbles again, holding out the pendant toward Din as if trying to share. “She called them a foundling.”

The Mandalorian term for orphan.

“So they’re yours to care for, now?”

He looks up at you. “Ours. Yes.”

Warmth rises in your throat. The child leans into your hand, looking up with a smile.

“Until we can find their people.”

You blink, “Sorry, what?”

“According to their chain code they’re fifty years old, and they’re still basically a baby. How old will we be when they’re grown enough to tell us where they came from?” he leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “And I don’t know the first thing about what they’re able to do. Surely powers like that will need training.”

Any answer you might have made sticks in your throat. You rub your thumb against the child’s back and they put the pendant into their mouth, blinking slowly at you. You were just getting used to having them around, now you’ve got to give them away?

Din exhales, leans into his seat. “Of course, I don’t even know where to start. She said there were battles fought on Mandalore, but that was under empire control before the fall. We have to assume it’s not safe there.”

“So,” you clear your throat. “We’re still laying low?”

“For a while, yes.”

You remember the Armourer telling him someone would be in contact about the new covert. You remember her saying you weren’t welcome there. If the child is a foundling then they’ll belong not just to Din but to his tribe, and he’ll eventually need their help to find this order of sorcerers.

All of a sudden, your relationship has an end date.

“Nnnambls, buh-buh,” the kid is waving the mythosaur pendant in your direction.

Din’s pulse picks up, but you’re not sure why. His hands are relaxed where they rest on his greaves. His breath steady. His scent is conflicted, confused. He just watches you with the kid in your lap, and says nothing.

You want to ask what’s on his mind, but you’re afraid of the answer.

#

You spread the shredded blanket out on the floor of the lower deck. Din had suggested that a birikad, a harness to carry the child against your chest, might be useful to have. The pod only responds to the controls on his gauntlet and you don’t have the spare electronics to make another remote. But… you do have this.

Spread out in the light, it’s easy to see where your claws have left rents and tears, punctures and rips. One end is basically ribbons already.

You have no memory of doing this. You know what must have happened, that you’d willingly gone out of your mind with pain in order to kill the jawas who were trying to turn the _Crest_ into scrap metal. That after they had fled your mind was still gone, and with nothing else to destroy you’d turned to this.

You’re amazed you didn’t do more damage.

Suppressing a shudder, you begin to snip through the material. You focus on the feel of the weave against the rough palm of your hand. Keeping your stitches even. Making each seam strong and secure. You want the child to be safe. For as long as you’re allowed to carry them, you’ll keep them safe.

When the birikad is done you look at the scraps. The dull grey of your blanket. The muted green leftovers from one of Din’s old shirts.

#

The side access hatch opens onto a forest clearing. You breathe in deeply, for long moments not registering any information in the scent beyond fresh air and green things.

Din makes a sound beside you that might be a snort, you’re not sure. “Not a desert planet, for once.”

“Mhm,” you agree, distracted. Swaddled against your chest, the kid pricks up their ears and burbles. Tucked in with them is a small doll that looks like them, with a muted green face and a dull grey robe. It’s not great, but you did the best you could with what you had.

“Mrrbl-buh!”

“I know, the _trees!_ I’ve missed trees so much!”

Din definitely chuckles then, coming down the ramp behind you and closing the hatch. “There’s a settlement a little way east of here, I’m going to see if there’s lodging. A change of scene would be nice.”

“Sure,” you’re eyeing the nearest trunk, wondering how long it’ll take you to climb. “I’ll catch up in a bit.”

He starts down a path between the trees, his ragged cape a sharp contrast to the gleam of the new armour. The child reaches out a tiny hand and makes a sad noise.

“Hey, ni ~~ch~~ ind,” you blink in surprise at yourself as the word is dredged up from somewhere in your memory. It’s been years since anyone called you a child. The kid just looks up at you curiously. “It’s alright. You want to see how fast we can get to the top of that tree?”

Perhaps responding to your voice, they lift their ears and chatter excitedly. You put one hand on the birikad as you jog across the clearing, making sure it’s secure enough not to shift. But the child stays snug and still.

The bark under your hand is gloriously textured, streaks of light and darker brown, crests and valleys, ridges that crumple as you flex your claws into the bark and pull. Gently, then harder. Tendons flex, and you sigh at the relief of a strain you’d forgotten was there. You’ve seen Din sigh after popping the joints in his shoulders before, maybe it’s similar to this.

You spend a blissful minute just scratching at the bark with your claws before you hook them firmly into the wood and lean back, testing with your full weight. Your grip is firm.

“Ready?” you murmur to the child.

“Boorr!”

You climb. The tree is a straight line to the sky. The branches are comparatively thin, too whippy to provide more than a foothold where they meet the trunk, and it’s mostly your grip and your claws that hold you up. It’s exhilarating. When you’re as high as you can get you hook your legs and one elbow around the trunk and lean out, head thrown back and fangs bared in a smile.

The kid laughs, a bubble of sound that makes you laugh too, patting them on the back with your free hand. “Couldn’t agree more, ni ~~ch~~ ind.”

The wind shifts. You hear a distant clang of metal on metal, and what sounds like a grunt of pain.

“Kriff.”

#

_As he pulls his blaster he finds the woman already has hers pointed at his face. They both go still, panting._

_The ground vibrates with footsteps. There’s a scattering of dirt as Taelir skids around the corner of the common house on all fours, the child bundled to their chest. They straighten up. The child cranes their neck to see the tableau._

_He peers up through his dusty visor. “Hi.”_

_“Five minutes,” Taelir stands, looming over them with one hand on the child and the other on their hip. “I look away for five_ kriffing _minutes.”_

#

Cara Dune happily lets you pay for her food, leaning on the table with one elbow so the rebel tattoo on her arm flexes. Her eyes are as dark as the sweep of hair across her forehead, her smirk self deprecating as she talks about dropships and Endor and her ‘early retirement’.

The child coos at her when she turns her face away, and she looks back at them where they sit on the table. Then she looks up at you.

She frowns, addressing you directly for the first time. “I assumed he was guild the moment he walked in,” her chin jerks toward Din’s side of the table. “But you? I’m not so sure.”

“I’m just crew,” you shrug, taking another drink of bone broth. Din looks at you, but he doesn’t comment before he turns back to Cara.

“We don’t have a puck for you, by the way. Just saving fuel for a time.”

She quirks an eyebrow. “Planet’s taken. I was here first.”

You lean forward over the table. You keep the smile in your voice as you say, “Little thing like you can’t take up _that_ much space.”

She blinks, laughs. She’s almost as tall as Din. If he were anyone else she could probably snap him in two, and she carries herself like she knows it. Her eyes size you up quickly, the expanse of your chest, the width of your arm, the size of your hand where it rests near your bowl. And she grins at you, feral, like _I reckon I could take you_.

You grin back, showing teeth.

If anything, her smile just gets wider. “Well, _you_ must be fun at parties.”

Din clears his throat with a burst of static. “I’m sure we can keep out of each other’s way. We’re not planning on being here that long.”

“Fair enough,” She drains the last of her broth, sets the bowl down. “But you’ll have to range a little wider if you’re looking for lodging, this is a small settlement and no one’s got a spare room. Best of luck with that,” she pushes herself up from the table and swaggers off without a backwards look.

Din sags a little as she walks away, defeated rather than relaxed. It would have been nice, you suppose, for him to have an actual room for a little while. A mattress that wasn’t on the floor, a blanket without holes. A door he could lock.

“It’s alright,” You begin to wrap the birikad around your chest again, trying to keep your voice bright. “Another few days on the _Crest_ won’t do us any harm.”

He doesn’t answer. You buy a few skewers of grilled grinjer on your way out. They’re cool by the time you get back to the ship but he takes them from you anyway, heading up the access ramp with tired footsteps while you take the child to play in the shade.

#

You’re perched on the top of the hull running diagnostics on the escape pod when you hear a noise. You switch off your headlamp and turn your head, eyes straining against the last of the twilight as you look out across the clearing.

There’s a light approaching through the trees from the direction of the settlement, too steady and too high to be carried by hand. Your ears flick back, forwards. The sound comes again, a metallic rattle. Perhaps a vehicle.

You turn, spinning open the hatch where the astromech socket would be and dropping through the hull into the middle of the galley. You call down the ladder into the lowerdeck, “Company.”

You hear the child make a noise of surprise as Din comes suddenly to the bottom of the ladder. “Who?”

“Didn’t see them, just heard a vehicle.”

“Alright,” he punches in the code for the weapons locker and a moment later he’s passing a blaster up to you. “I’ll take a look.”

You scramble back up onto the hull in time to see an R2 unit slowly guide a dilapidated speeder into the clearing. You lie flat on your stomach, blaster propped on your forearm, and breathe slowly. There are two passengers, both human men, smelling of soil and sweat. They hold themselves small as they climb off the speeder and approach slowly. They flinch when the _Crest’s_ side access opens, one of them almost dropping his lantern. The droid doesn’t leave the vehicle.

“Can I help you?” Din rumbles. You see him walk just far enough down the ramp for you to see him, stopping with his stance relaxed and head on one side.

The men, farmers, bluster through a request for help. Raiders. A stolen harvest. A promise of payment. “I’m not a mercenary,” Din replies, still not moving. The men seem to deflate.

You breathe slowly. They smell tired, they look ground down, clothes much repaired and worn at the knees. The one with the lantern turns as if to leave. And Din’s still standing there, undecided. Or too proud to accept.

“You got anything to eat that’s not pickled lamta?” you call out, sliding the blaster out of sight. The men look up, and the older one squints cautiously.

“Uh, yeah?”

“We’ll take the job.”

#

Din and Cara ride in the back of the speeder, the child propped up between sacks. The farmers Stoke and Caben are in the front, Caben slumped and dozing on Stoke’s shoulder.

You walk alongside, enjoying the softness of the forest floor under your bare feet and taking in the sounds around you. Insects flit against the lantern, the droid rattles a little in its housing, the night breeze sighs in the treetops. You turn your head, then stop, listening.

“What _is_ a grinjer, by the way?” you ask.

“Tasted a bit like nerf,” Din look back at you, “Why?”

“They don’t smell as bad,” Cara hooks her arm over the edge of the speeder, watching you lazily as it passes you. “But they’re bigger, and a lot meaner. There won’t be any nearby though.”

“No,” you taste the air, then start walking again. “They’re a way off.”

Cara raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t comment.

Din shifts, trying to get comfortable. The helmet turns toward you for a moment, and you nod. Slowly he relaxes, and over the next few minutes you see his posture slump incrementally into sleep.

The stars turn, bright in the pathway of night sky stretching ahead above you. One by one the others doze off, until you’re left alone with the droid. It ignores you completely, the flattened dome of its head pointed steadily forward.

Din has never told you why he hates droids, why he’d rather micromanage every aspect of the _Crest_ rather than trust any kind of AI, why he pulled a blaster on the last medical droid that offered to help him with an injury. It’s obviously more than an idle dislike, but you’ve never felt comfortable asking about it.

As for yourself, droids can be profoundly frustrating. You rely so much on scent, on hearing, on the spice of an emotion or the thudding of a pulse. Even Din, with his face hidden and his voice modulated, is generally someone you can read. With droids there is no such information. You might hear the whir and drone of servos, or smell if their circuitry is heating up, but it’s impossible to tell why. So you find yourself always just a little on edge, always watching to see what they’ll do next.

The sky is just beginning to lighten when you catch the scent of water and wood smoke. It’s almost dawn when you see the trees ahead beginning to thin. The droid chirrups an alert, and Stoke jerks awake. You move closer to the speeder, lay a hand on Din’s shoulder. He shifts, and sits up slowly as you enter the clearing.

A haze of mist and cooking smoke drifts low over the cluster of buildings and past the tall reeds and artificial ponds you get an impression of thatched roofs and scattered wooden structures, fishing nets hung up to dry. A few windows with lights flickering. Muted voices. Farm life always starts early.

The speeder trundles to a stop and the droid beeps, _Destination reached._

Stoke pokes Caben in the head. “Wake up, we have to unload. Who was it said they’d take them?”

Caben makes a grumbling noise and slides off the speeder, barely opening his eyes as he mutters a couple of names. Stoke nods and turns around, pointing one direction then another. “The woman can stay with Laen, the men will be in the barn near Omera’s.”

Din glances over his shoulder at you, but you shake your head. You’ve been walking all night and you’re really not up to explaining your gender right now. You settle for tucking a crate under each arm and following as Stoke leads you along a dirt path to one of the larger buildings. Inside it’s dark and cluttered, the roof held up with a few thick posts. There’s a ledge with a railing built into the back and side walls stacked with what might be storage containers. Or maybe brewing vats of some kind, the air smells warm and pleasantly fermented in a way that reminds you of the common house. The farmers had mentioned spotchka.

You turn as you hear Din approach with the sleeping child cradled against his chest and a bedroll hoisted on his shoulder. He stands in the arch of the doorway, the first hint of dawn gleaming on his helmet as he looks around, his gaze seeming to linger on the curtain that’s been pulled to one side. There’s no actual door.

“Oh well,” he murmurs, and drops the bedroll to rest on his boot. “I’ve slept in my armour plenty of times before.”

“I’m sorry,” you can’t help saying.

He pauses, looks up at you. “There’s that face again. What do you think is your fault this time?”

It’s said gently, but you still can’t think of an answer. You shrug and turn your back, starting to rearrange the crates against one wall to make a space. Maybe if they can lend you another blanket and a rope you can section off part of the room…? You stop as his glove finds your arm.

“It’s alright. Just rest for a bit. I’ll come back with a bed for the kid,” he passes you the child, who sighs but doesn’t wake.

You nod, and you’ve barely laid down on the bedroll he unfolds for you before you’re out like a light.

#

You wake around mid morning to see a human girl ducking out of sight around the doorway. The child is in a crib beside you, watching the door and burbling happily. You stay still.

The girl peers around the door again, and the child claps their hands and giggles.

“Winta? What are you - oh.” A tall woman with long dark hair appears, smiling at the child. “You made a friend.”

You sit up, stretching your arms until you hear your joints pop. The girl squeaks, and disappears again.

The child reaches through the bars of the crib, “Mmmbup?”

“I don’t know,” you smile at the kid, then at the woman, “Where _did_ she go? Maybe she’ll come back if you call her.”

“Ing-ga!”

The woman’s eyes sparkle as you crouch, scooping up the kid, and her expression only falters a little when you stand and rise up to your full height. The kid continues their commentary, waving their hands toward the door and chuckling when you come into the open and they see the girl, who dives behind the woman as soon as she sees you.

“I’m Taelir,” you keep your ears pricked and your teeth as covered as possible. “Hear you’ve got a raider problem.”

“I’m Omera,” the woman answers, and gestures to the girl behind her. “This is my daughter, Winta. We don’t get a lot of strangers around here.”

“That’s fair enough, we are pretty strange,” you nod amiably. The kid wriggles slightly, bapping your forearm with their hands, and you stoop to set them on the ground. They immediately start toddling for Winta, burbling again.

“What’s the little one’s name?” Omera asks, and you instantly feel like a terrible person. The child isn’t yours, isn’t going to stay yours, and you know that you shouldn’t be giving them a name because then you’ll only get attached but -

“Ni ~~ch~~ ind.” It’s just the lionae term for a small child, but she’s not to know that.

“Nik-hint?” she tries, frowning as the different shape of her mouth clips the sound.

You’re about to repeat it for her when you hear the child’s voice pipe up, suddenly not babbling but talking. At least for one word. “Ni ~~ch~~ ind!”

You stare down at them. The soft hissing rasp of the ~~_ch_~~ is perfectly distinct. And this is only the third time they’ve heard you say it. “That’s right,” you say, mouth absolutely on autopilot, and the child - Ni ~~ch~~ ind - grins back at you.

#

_Din is sitting on one of the benches in the centre of the village going over his rifle when Taelir appears and hastily dumps the child in his lap._

_“Omera told me which way the bandits always come from, I’m going to go scout the camp, I’ll be careful, also I accidentally named the kid I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you about it first. Bye.”_

_Cara blinks, watching the pale figure pull the hood of their cape over their head and disappear into the trees. “Interesting crew you have there.”_

_He looks at the child on his knee, tilting his head. They smile up at him. “Ni ~~ch~~ ind!”_

#

You lose yourself in the details of the forest. The shift of needleleaves under your feet. The give of tree bark in your grip. The dwindling sounds of the village behind you, playing children and chattering farmers. The flitting of birds, the spoor of small mammals, the rising rich scent of disturbed earth from the bootprints ahead of you.

You pause, crouching to make it easier for your poorer eyesight to take in the scene. You note the sizes of prints, the disturbances where they overlay each other, where the impact is deeper or shallower. The wind is still under the trees, and there’s been no recent rain, nothing to disturb the tracks except a few occasional skitterings of wildlife. And the raiders haven’t made any attempt to disguise their passage. But then krill farmers are not hunters, what would the raiders have to fear?

Dropping lower, your shoulders level with your knees, you close your eyes and breathe in.

More than ten, maybe less than twenty. Klatooinian, mostly male. You smell badly maintained durasteel, sweat, an unpleasant edge of clothing that rarely gets washed.

You sit back on your haunches, looking ahead to where the raiders have stormed through the undergrowth. But the pale interior of a broken branch a few metres up stills you. What broke that?

You move cautiously, not disturbing the raider’s tracks, until you find a new footprint. Round, flat in places and grooved in others. As long as Winta is tall, and pressed deep into the soil. The trail of destruction stretches away through the trees, each print several strides apart.

Big, heavy, and fast. Smelling of metal. All Terrain Scout Transport.

“Kriff.”

You should head back with this new information. You were hired to run off some drunken Klatooinians, not take down Imperial armaments. But when you turn to head back the way you came you hesitate.

Footprints as long as Winta is tall. Would the village listen to Din’s advice, would they up and leave due to this extremely legitimate threat?

You think of Omera’s face, of how she’d barely flinched at the size of you.

And you turn, taking to the trees.

#

When you get back to the village several hours later, Din is sitting on the barn steps waiting for you. Late afternoon sun glints on the shadow of his visor as he looks up. “Find them okay?”

“Yeah,” you drop to your haunches, folding so far in on yourself in your exhaustion that your elbows are almost resting on the ground between your feet. You feel your tail scuff the dirt as it twitches, and you hear his heart rate pick up as he notices your agitation. “So we landed the Crest off to the south here,” you sketch a mark on the ground off to your left, “and if the village is about here,” another mark in front of you, “then the raiders are here,” a third mark a little to the right.

“That close?”

“Thereabouts.” You smooth the dirt again, begin to trace a series of small and large circles with a claw tip. “Their camp is temporary, a few tents and hearths scattered around. One that smelled like brewing, others over here that mostly smell like unwashed Klatooinian.” You scratch a final shape, a rectangle just at the north-east edge of the camp.

Din makes a small gesture, “And that?”

You sit back, dusting off your hands. “AT-ST.”

He stares at you in silence.

There’s a sharp sting of fear in the air behind you and you turn to see Cara, her jaw clenched, and Omera with the child on her hip. The trooper glares at your sketched map and shakes her head.

“No. That is _not_ what I signed up for.”

You look up at her. She’s not showing how upset she is, but her fear is plainly real, and to an extent you don’t blame her. She was a soldier, she must have experience actually fighting these things. With more information, maybe you’d be scared too.

But mostly you’re just too kriffing tired. This was meant to be a quiet, goes-nowhere-does-nothing planet, somewhere you could sleep and eat your way through your supplies and climb trees and let the kid play in the river, maybe fuck Din if that’s something he even wants from you anymore. You could use the time to find that out. But you can’t do any of that with this threat breathing down your neck.

“Come on, little lady,” you smirk, enjoying how Cara stiffens and almost bares her teeth at you. “Bet you I can take down more raiders than you can.”

Din's far more diplomatic. “It’d be a lot easier with three of us.”

“Not just three,” Omera cuts in before Cara can reply. “There at least twenty of us who’ll fight with you.”

Cara turns to her, something pained in her eyes. “I’ve seen those things take out _companies_ of soldiers. You can’t fight this.”

Omera stands a little straighter, stares back levelly. “We’re not leaving.”

#

The days pass quickly. Din unloads an arsenal of sidearms and rifles and patiently teaches the farmers to shoot. Omera is somehow already excellent, but she doesn’t explain why and you don’t ask. Cara, with somewhat less patience, schools the remaining volunteers in drills with sharpened stakes.

You spend your time sparing the fighters as much heavy labour as possible. You cut down and split the trunks of small trees, cobbling together wood into barricades until your palms are raw and your fur sticky with sap. You help dig out the just-in-case pit trap for the walker until your fur turns coppery with clay that won’t wash out. You haul mud away from the dig site, and haul water from the river to fill the pond up again.

You work until after dark and collapse on the floor of the barn to sleep, waking up covered in mud that’s since dried to powder, sigh, then get up to do it again.

Until at last one afternoon Din calls you over to where he’s standing with Cara and a few of the farmers. Omera’s face is drawn, but hopeful.

“We’re ready.”

#

The plan is straightforward. They generally are, right up until they're not.

Your dark cloak is pulled close around your body, although the mud staining your white fur makes it slightly less necessary. Din touches your shoulder as he stops moving, and Cara goes still a step behind you. All three of you have spotted the camp fires visible through the trees.

Without needing to discuss it, you split up. One raider after another is plucked from the firelight, necks snapped or lungs punctured or throats slit, the bodies laid quietly in the dark amongst the trees. Din and Cara slip into the brewing tent to lay the charges and you head to where you saw the walker before, crouched low and moving carefully. Your foot skids in loose earth and you realise with a lurch in your stomach that the hollow between the bushes is empty.

It's been moved. You cast about for tracks, but the flickering light is hard on your eyes and the ground is covered in untrustworthy shadows. You try to find the scent. Mouth open, eyes half shut - you catch the chill of durasteel and the burn of fuel, and turn.

You’ve not taken more than two steps before you hear fighting from the brewing tent. Thudding impact of fists on leather armour. Grunts of effort, of pain. A gurgle as of someone drowning. You hesitate.

You can’t leave him.

As you rip open the curtained doorway you register three things.

A few steps away, the raiders turning to you in surprise, blasters raised.

The distant, frantic peeping of the charge timer.

At the far side of the tent, Din and Cara shooting their way free through the wall.

You skitter backwards, knowing it’s already too late. Light, and noise. A body slams into your face and you’re knocked down in a cacophony and stink of chemical flame. There’s a dead raider sprawled across you, mangled from taking the brunt of the explosion. Your vision is streaked with afterimages, burning wreckage pockmarked with brighter flashes of blaster fire as Din and Cara begin to run, leading the raiders to the ambush in the village. You think you hear Din’s voice raised in alarm, and you heave yourself out of the rubble, force yourself to your feet.

Something moves in the trees. Something tall, getting taller, glaring red eyes in the night.

You swipe the mess of blood out of your face and charge forward in a staggering run, dodging burning patches of canvas and dead bodies, feeling the repeated slamming of its tread in the ground, the snarl rumbling up in your chest. The AT-ST is thudding toward the village, crashing through branches and firing wildly. Even loud as it is you feel like it’s not as loud as it should be, the sound reverberating strangely in your head as if from underwater. Your vision is blurred, your hearing is worse. There’s blood in your mouth and your claws are unsheathed, hands rigid, and you can feel the rising tide of pain and rage threatening to swallow you.

But the walker is chasing Din.

In a burst of speed you outpace it, barely ahead and to its left, launching from the ground and into the trees, wrenching yourself skywards in a few seconds of movement that surely tore muscles. The cockpit is passing you on your right. You fling yourself into space, claws scrabbling over metal with a nightmare screech, and manage to catch hold of the wheel of the entry hatch.

There's a shout from inside. Metal tilts beneath your feet like a ship in a storm. You have moments.

You set your feet. You grip with both hands. The hatch is locked from inside but you haul on it anyway, vertebrae popping and tendons screaming with the effort - or is that you? - and with your vision edging into white the metal buckles and the hatch gives way.

You hurl it over your shoulder.

The upturned face of the pilot is edged in vibrant light as if the image is carved into your retina. You reach in, snatch at his collar and haul him out, holding him one handed up to your face as you bare your teeth and taste the terror in his breath.

He tried to hurt Din. He wanted to hurt the child. He’ll never get the chance. For a long, beautiful moment you think of the pain you could inflict, the destruction, the wreckage of a living thing that would be left behind once you were through with him.

Your vision is whiting out. The figure in your grip is already hanging lifeless, neck crushed in your hand.

You gasp for breath, for control, trying to throttle back the swelling of rage in your chest, in your throat, in the roar you let loose as you throw the body aside and try to remember there was a plan. You rip the charge from your belt, toss it through the entry hatch, and turn to jump clear.

New pain lances searing cold through the muscle of your thigh and your feet skid out from under you, your body tumbling and crunching shoulder first into a tree, ricocheting off the trunk and flailing as you fall.

The walker explodes.


	4. The Rescue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Din finds Taelir. Taelir finds Din.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case anyone is reading this who'd prefer to avoid the less vague smut, feel free to skip from "You stroke your hands down his back..." to the next scene break, and you won't miss anything plot related.

_They’ve just skidded to the ground behind the barricade when there’s a noise from the woods. Even over the yells of the approaching raiders, Cara’s shouted commands, and the outbreak of blaster fire, Din recognises the sound of Taelir’s roar. The night is dark and loud but for an instant he’s in a sunlit valley on Arvala-7, watching as the mudhorn tosses a limp white body aside._

_Then there’s an explosion, too distant to see but loud enough that Omera flinches beside him, clutching the rifle to her chest._

_“They got it then?” she gasps._

_He straightens to look over the barricade, bracing his sidearm on his other hand as he takes out the closest raider. They collapse to the ground and he scans the field, sees some of the raiders are hesitating, glancing back over their shoulders. The cavalry’s not coming._

_“I think so.”_

_Omera grins up at him, then stands and begins to pick off raiders with cold precision._

_It’s much later, when they’re dealing with the last of the dying, that he realises Taelir hasn’t returned._

#

You are breathing. The world is a fragmented mass of pain. You taste blood. Your hands are buried in something soft. You are breathing.

#

_The raiders’ campsite is a wreck. Shreds of canvas, of bodies, of shattered and torn strips of metal, of wood, or uprooted plants._

_The child, held against his chest, whimpers._

_“Be careful,” he murmurs, and Cara gives him a sidelong glance._

_“Pretty sure the raiders are dead, Mando,” she prods something with the end of the amban rifle. It’s too small to be a corpse. Or at least, all of one._

_“They’re not what I’m worried about.”_

_“If you’re so worried why the hell did you bring the kid?”_

_He’s not listening. The child is facing the centre of the clearing, one hand outstretched, their voice a thready, constant whine. He looks over to what he initially took to be another dead body. His breath stalls in his throat._

_Taelir’s fur and clothing is dark with blood and ash. There’s a scorched gash through one leg of the cutoff pants, both arms are outstretched with hands buried in the dirt, wrist deep in churned soil and loam. The shoulder on one side looks strangely uneven. The pale face is a mask of gore from the muzzle downwards. The eyes stare sightlessly at the sky._

_“What the - ?”_

_“Cara.” Din takes a long, slow breath. Adjusts the child in his arms. “I need you to circle around so you can get a clear shot. If I tell you, shoot.”_

_He doesn’t need to say who. She just looks at him, then nods. Taelir mentioned a while ago that lionae were engineered as soldiers. Maybe she’s fought alongside them before._

_With Cara in position, he takes a step closer._

#

You are breathing. Your hands are buried in something soft. The world is grey, prickled at the edges with uneven black lines.

Trees. A pale, pre-dawn sky. And trees.

You hear that sound again. It’s important. You can’t remember why.

You blink. Your eyes hurt.

“Taelir.”

The sound means something. The voice matters.

“Taelir. Look at me.”

There’s another sound, higher pitched, upset. You blink, and manage to roll your head to one side.

Din is standing a few steps away, Ni ~~ch~~ ind held against his chest but reaching out toward you with tiny, insistent hands. They whimper again.

You open your mouth, trying not to make a face at the taste as you inhale. “I’m alright.” That’s not really true. Your voice is hoarse, your leg and your shoulder are all frozen agony, your arms are aching, and you’re desperately thirsty. But you’re yourself, which strikes you as unusual.

Din takes the last few steps to your side and folds to his knees, placing one trembling hand on your shoulder. “Wha -” he stops, has to start again. “Your leg is hurt. What else?”

“Not sure. I think I got shot. A few times maybe.”

There’s a stunned laugh behind you, and you recognise Cara’s voice.

Ni ~~ch~~ ind is fretting, wriggling to be put down, and Din seems to rally. “Just a moment ad’ika, just wait,” the helmet turns to you again. “We need to get you back to the village, can you stand? We bought the speeder.”

Both of them need to help you haul yourself to your feet, and your leg starts bleeding again, and there’s a stabbing pain in your shoulder which is probably a broken bone, but you keep your gaze on the child who stares back at you from the flatbed of the speeder, and while the whiteout threatens it doesn’t close in.

But you do pass out as soon as you lie down.

#

You wake up a few times, but it’s hard to tell how much time is passing. Someone pours water down your throat. Pain in your shoulder, your arm, in your side, in your leg. Water. You’re still thirsty. It’s dark when Omera tries to give you broth, but you fall asleep again before you notice anything else. The child is near you. At one point you think you hear the _Razor Crest_ , far away.

You dream, or you think you do. Of Din sitting on the floor next to you, your crooked hand held in both of his, and his voice speaking to you softly about things that you now can’t remember.

You open your eyes, blinking in the faint light visible through the weave of the barn wall beside you. There’s a blanket over you. It’s thicker and softer than your old one. It’s hard to judge the colour, but you think it might be blue. Like the clothing the villagers wear.

Tucked under the blanket next to you, in the valley between your arm and your chest, is Ni ~~ch~~ ind. They’re fast asleep, the tiny chest rising and falling softly, the eyelids flickering as if dreaming. You're sure they’ve been here a while, but you don’t know how you know that. When you turn your head to look at them more closely, you realise your broken collarbone is totally healed.

You take stock of your injuries, and find them gone. You’re not even thirsty anymore, your body having replaced the blood it lost. You must have been more badly hurt than you’d thought. How long have you been out?

There’s a sound as you move, and you look up to see Cara sitting on a crate against the far wall.

“Hey big guy. They were worried you wouldn’t make it for a while.”

“I -” you have to clear your throat and start again. “I wasn’t hurt that bad, was I?”

She raises her eyebrows. “You took a blaster bolt in the thigh at close range, not only were your muscles kriffed but your femur was fractured, and it looked like you kept running on it for a while. Shot in six other places. Clavicle and most of your ribs broken, shoulder dislocated, your left forearm broken, a couple of claws snapped through. Din wouldn’t let the old lady touch your face to make sure but he thought your jaw was broken too.” She looks aside, shifts uncomfortably. “We only had about thirty raiders show up here, they were easy enough to pick off. We weren’t able to get an accurate bodycount from their campsite before we burned the remains,” her mouth twists in a humourless smirk, “but I’d say there were at least another twenty. Not including the two in the AT-ST.”

You’re silent for a long moment, thinking. “Two,” you relax, looking up at the ceiling again. “The pilot and the gunner. I forgot about the second one.”

“Well you got him in the end, based on the smear he left in the cockpit.” She stands, hands on hips. “I’ll let them know you’re awake.”

She doesn’t ask why you’re still alive, after all that. She doesn’t mention the child. You watch her go, then carefully haul yourself up until you’re sitting propped against a support post, Ni ~~ch~~ ind still asleep in the crook of your arm.

Boots on wood. Beskar. You look up as Din flings the curtain aside and drops to his knees beside you, his pulse like thunder and his scent cold and anxious. He holds out a hand, but doesn’t quite touch you. You catch it in yours, tighten your fingers around the tremors in his.

“Are you alright?” you ask.

He makes that not-laugh sound, a burst of static through the helmet. “I’m fine. Are you -”

“I’m fine.”

They help you up, help you out of the barn, help you to the centre of the village where a dismantled barricade is being fed into the flames. Sap spits and pops, the smoke thick and fragrant, but the crowded faces are smiling anyway, firelit and warm in the oncoming night.

Cara leaves and comes back with a bowl of something steaming. “I see this one’s not leaving you anytime soon,” she drawls, nodding at Din where he sits on the bench beside you, Ni ~~ch~~ ind drowsy on his lap. You watch the line of his shoulders stiffen almost imperceptibly but he doesn’t loosen his grip on your hand. The bonfire and the food smell rich and comforting, but past that you can scent that he’s still anxious, unsure.

“How long was I out?” you murmur.

The helmet tilts toward you. “We found you close to dawn, the day before yesterday. Brought you back. I managed to keep the kid away at least until Laen set the broken bones, but the second I stepped out I came back to find them passed out beside you, and -” he cuts himself off, perhaps noticing Cara watching you.

You drink your broth, glancing at the sleeping child. You feel tired, still somewhat wrung out, but nothing _hurts_. They’ve slept longer this time, compared to the mudhorn. But then, the extent of your injuries and the time they’d gone untreated was worse this time.

“Thank you,” you say, as Cara drifts off to the other side of the fire. “I’m s-”

“If you say you’re sorry I am going to be extremely annoyed at you,” his voice is light, the helmet tilted like he’s making a joke, but his grip on your hand is unforgiving. You squeeze back.

“I’m glad to see you’re up,” Omera appears at your shoulder. “But you still need to take it easy. Let me keep an eye on the little one tonight.”

She's scooping Ni ~~ch~~ ind up from Din’s lap before either of you can move, a faint smile playing around her mouth. You spot Cara a few steps away looking extremely amused, but you’re not sure what the joke is. Din’s hand is holding yours even tighter.

“That’s very thoughtful of you,” he chokes out.

Omera just holds Ni ~~ch~~ ind against her shoulder and shakes her head. “The both of you have done so much for us. A little baby minding is the least I can do in return.” She grins at you then, cheekily. “Well. Off you go.”

#

You’re a little confused when Din leads you away from the fireside, and baffled when you pass by the barn completely.

“Where -”

“This morning Stoke took me back to where we first landed. Raiders are dealt with. There wasn’t a reason to hide the _Crest_ from them anymore.”

You round the last hut at the edge of the village and you can see, gleaming in the starlight, the battered silver curve of the ship. You take a deep breath at the unexpected swell of feeling in your chest, at the sensation of home. You hadn’t realised how badly you were missing her until she was before you again.

Din looks at you a moment. “Yeah,” his helmet turns from your face to the ship. “Me too.”

A press on his gauntlet and the side access hisses open with a flood of scent. After the open spaces of the village and the growing things in the forest the _Crest_ smells a little cold, a little stale, but it’s achingly familiar. Soil clings to your bare feet as you walk in, and the grit of it against the metal floorplates takes you vividly back to the first time you ever set foot on the ship, on some tiny planet you didn’t know the name of with mud in your fur and a bounty hunter after you.

Your fur is still stained with the clay and dried blood they weren’t able to wash out completely. There’s still a bounty hunter behind you, but his hand is holding yours and as the door shuts behind you he pulls you close.

Your head bows over his, the helmet cool against your cheek and his scent rising warm through his clothes. But there’s still that streak of anxiety. You rest your hand on his shoulder, hold him steady. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m sorry,” he says, almost too quietly for the helmet to pick up. “I don’t… I can’t…” a deep breath, then he steps away from you. In the total dark of the windowless hold you’re reliant on scent and sound. His pulse is fast, his breath uneven, his scent suddenly both richer and clearer as you hear the hollow ring of his helmet hitting the floor. His hand knocks against your chest, catches in your mane and hauls you close, his bare face pressed into the side of your neck as you bend to meet him. “I used to do this all on my own. I didn’t realise how much easier - how much better - everything is with you here. Until I didn’t know if -”

If you were going to survive. You swallow the guilt that rises like bile in your throat. You’re meant to protect him, instead you only scared him. What is wrong with you?

Din's breath comes easier now, you can hear him drawing lungfuls of your scent through his nose and sighing damp air against the base of your throat, your collarbone. You cup the back of his head, smoothing your rough palms over the soft curls, drinking in his scent. He’s been trapped in the armour for days. It’s happened on jobs before, where he’d barely take the helmet off to eat or drink, where there was no safe corner to even sleep without it on.

Most of the time it feels like he belongs in the armour, wearing it with strength and impervious courage. Other times the armour wears him.

“There’s water in the tanks,” you murmur. “Shower with me?”

Your own bloodied clothes are simple enough to strip out of. You can feel there are holes you’ll need to patch in the morning, but that’s tomorrow’s problem. Din’s armour cracks open piece by piece, each part lined up in sequence on the table against the wall. You stuff his clothes in the cleaning unit the moment he peels them off. Under the scent of sweat, of dirt and krill and dead raider, you smell his blood at the surface of his skin. Blushing.

You both make your way into the fresher by feel. There’s just enough space for him to stand in the shower well while you lean against the wall beside it. You listen as he leaves the cubicle door open, switches from sonics to liquid, and douses himself in a brief gout of water. As he stands there dripping you reach past him for a washcloth and cleaning fluid, handing him the former as you begin to lather his hair.

He sighs brokenly at the grip of your fingers on his scalp. You smile sadly, knowing he can’t see it, grateful all the same that you’re able to do this for him. That you’re alive to do this.

You wash his hair. Smooth the cleaning gel over the muscles in his shoulders and back. Massage it into the scraggle of hair on his chest. You take the cloth from him and kneel, washing one leg then the other. His scent is coming clearer and clearer as the soap cuts through the mess of the last week, and he’s half hard by the time you’re finished, his hands on your shoulders and his breath slow.

But he straightens, turns on the water again to wash the suds and grime off his body. Then he steps dripping out of the shower, and guides you in.

The water is cool, unheated, but it’s clean. This is the freshwater you bought by the ice block on Maldo Kreis and it smells so purely of nothing that you have to bite your lip. No krill. No river mud. Just soothing wetness sluicing through your fur.

He turns off the water and you hear him pouring the cleaning fluid into his palm. At his hand on your shoulder you drop to your haunches, bowing your head to give him easier access as he begins to work the suds into your mane, the back of your ears, the crown of your head. The bridge of your muzzle. Under your jaw. You tilt back your head, showing your throat, and as he presses into the tight muscles in your shoulders you begin to purr.

By the time you’re washed and rinsed and vacuumed dry, you’re at the same time hypersensitive and utterly exhausted, your joints loose and your muscles aching sweetly. You find his hand in the dark. “Can we -?”

“Here,” he murmurs, voice rough and gentle. “Upstairs.”

When you haul yourself to the upper deck you notice a new scent. Feeling your way to your bunk you find a mattress already unrolled and a stack of blankets folded neatly at one end. They smell a little like the barn, like the village, the weave thick and soft like the blanket you’d woken up under earlier. Gifts.

There’s a sound behind you and you look up. Only as you realise you can see do you realise what the noise was. The door to the cockpit opening.

Starlight shines softly through the transparisteel window, glinting on the edges of the console, the pilot’s chair, and Din. He’s silhouetted in the doorway, the curves of his muscled shoulders and the damp curls of his hair highlighted silver.

You close your eyes. You hear his bare feet whisper to the edge of your bed, the shift of cloth as he kneels beside you.

“Taelir.” He takes your hand in both of his, very gently. “Look at me.”

You don’t. “I don’t understand. Why are you doing this?”

“You could have died. And you would never have known what I look like. And I’d have never seen your face with my own eyes.”

You realise you’re shaking when he gathers you into his arms, guiding your head down against his shoulder. You fold into him, pulling him into your lap and pressing him close until you can feel his heart beating counterpoint to both of yours. He strokes his hand over your mane again and again. With an effort you match your breath to his.

“But I didn’t die,” you manage. “And you’re not allowed.”

“Shouldn’t that be up to me?”

“Will they take you back?” you lift your face, your eyes still firmly shut. “When they tell you where the new covert is and you go back to them, would they let you in if they knew you were doing this?” He doesn’t answer, but his scent goes a little cold. “They’re your family,” you continue, feeling the muscles in his back stiffen under your hands. “I can’t take your family from you.”

“And what are you, then?” he whispers, hoarse. “Just crew?”

His breath sounds distant, and you realise your ears are pressed flat to your head. If your eyes were open you know the pupils would be flooded, you can feel your pulse slamming in your throat, almost choking you. What can you say? That you love him? That you don’t know what your life would be if he weren’t in it? That saying goodbye will destroy you?

His hands are pulling away from you and you catch at his wrist in a panic, pressing his open palm against the side of your face. You hold it there, tears squeezing from between closed eyelids and your teeth bared in a silent snarl. You have no words for this.

He’s silent for a long moment, his fingers spreading against your cheekbone, the corner of your eye. “You’ve never -” he clears his throat. “You’ve never said what this means.”

You remember when you’d first met. The man you’d attacked because he touched your face.

“It’s… important,” the words come from far away. “Intimate. Our claws are dangerous, our teeth. Traditionally it’s only a mother who can touch your face. Or - or the people you choose for life.”

His hand, on your cheek, is warm. His thumb traces the edge of your mouth. “You let me… it was almost the first day.”

You nuzzle blindly into his palm. “I know.”

He leans closer, taking the sensitive edge of your ear in blunt teeth. When he speaks his voice is ragged. “Please. Look at me.”

He sits back. Waits.

You open your eyes.

There’s not much light to see by, the starlight filtering faint from two rooms away. Everything’s colourless. Shadows and silver.

He’s looking at you. His eyes are dark, brows furrowed, dark curls of hair falling across his forehead. An uneven line of beard along his jaw. It’s a face, like any other human’s. You could have walked past him in any street and you would hardly have noticed.

Then, “Taelir,” he says, _you see him say_ , and you crumple, reaching to gather him to you again and pressing your forehead against his, his hands making fists in your mane and you realise you’re whimpering, a high pitched keen of sound. You don’t know why. You just hold him closer as his legs wrap around your waist, as he shudders against you and hides his face in your chest.

You stroke your hands down his back, trying to focus on the warmth in his shivering skin, the dampness of the shower and fresh sweat. He breathes against you. You cup your hands under his thighs, heft him closer against you, until his cheek is pressed to yours and his cock is hard between you, where you can feel yourself unsheathing. He gasps, sighs, tugs on your fur. Tilts his hips.

A sound rumbles in your chest as you rise up on your knees, turning your body to lie him down on the mattress under you, your hands at his hips and your tongue at the corner of his jaw. Your grip feels uneven, and you remember the broken claws that haven’t yet regrown. You remember sinking your fingers into the bloody soil and staring at the sky to wait for dawn. You might have never had this again. It’s unthinkable.

He strokes his hands over your head, your ears, the parts of your face he can reach, groaning softly as you trail kisses down his neck, over his chest. When you lave at a nipple he whines, writhing against you. His breath hitches, and you glance up.

The light from the cockpit falls across his face and you take in the contorted line of his brow, the uneven mouth. The glint of tears. He sees you looking at him and he presses his hands over his face, laughing wetly.

“I’m sorry.”

“Ssh, it’s alright,” you drop your head to his stomach, looking away to give him space. “I can close the door if you want.”

“No,” he smooths back your mane with one hand. “It’s just. A lot. Can we switch places?”

You shift, leaning to lie on your side beside him. He pushes at your shoulder, eases you onto your back. When he rises on his knees above you he’s facing toward the cockpit and the starlight catches in his eyes, in the crinkles at their edges as he smiles, and you can’t help but reach for him. Your hand frames his jaw and he smiles wider, presses his damp cheek against your palm.

He runs a hand up your forearm, along your bicep, your chest. Combs fingertips through the sleek white coat of your torso. He shuffles back and his thumbs trace the muscle over your hipbone, teasing, giving you just enough space to arch up into the contact.

He’s watching you in small, darting glances, your expression and your movements. But of course this is a first for him too - he’s never been able to see what you look like at a moment like this, has never caught whatever your face does when he takes your cock in his hands. You try to keep your eyes open, but the intimacy of being observed, of seeing him seeing you, is too much. You close your eyes and surrender to the feeling of his skin smooth on yours. The heat of his breath. His mouth. He drags his tongue up the length of your cock and your head drops back, your eyes scrunched shut and your teeth bared.

He takes your hand where it’s fisted in the blanket, lifts it to rest on his hair. Trembling, you push the sweat damp curls back from his face, looking down to see him looking back at you, eyes fixed on yours as he takes you in his mouth as deep as he can. He has one hand gripped on your shaft and the other arm braced across your hips as if to hold you still. You shift restlessly against his hold and he leans more of his weight on you, his gaze dark and amused.

Even as exhausted as you are, he’s not strong enough to hold you down. But you want to stay.

You comb back his hair, reaching with your other hand to touch his shoulder, the nape of his neck. His hollowed out cheek. He hums, pleased, as he takes you in deeper, and you shudder at the feeling. His scent is rich and bright, his skin flushed, his pulse thudding under your palm, his eyes - his _eyes_.

You moan, your hands shaking, arching up into his touch, struggling to hold back enough that you won’t hurt him. He seems to drink in the sight of you as if he’d been dying of thirst, and at a final twist of his hand you have to close your eyes, head pressed back into the mattress as you come across his tongue.

You float for a timeless, blissful moment. When you can breathe again you hold out your hand and he catches it in his, kisses your palm. You tug gently. “Come here?”

He moves closer and you reach for him, manoeuvre him until he’s kneeling over your shoulders and you can lift your head a little, take him entirely into your mouth, flushed hard and leaking. You look up at him above you, at the complex furrows of his brows and the twist of his mouth, the tightness of his jaw as you press your tongue against him, feeling him nudge against the back of your throat as you pull his hips closer. He catches himself with one hand on the hull beside the mattress, his other on the crown of your head, and he opens his eyes to see you looking back up at him.

He comes, staring, mouth open as if it takes him by surprise. You swallow him down, gentle through the aftershocks. You reach up to take his arms. Help him balance. Help him lie down beside you with his head on your shoulder. He takes in lungfuls of air and exhales them shakily. Shivering. Overcome.

You manage to pull one of the blankets over you both and pull him closer, your arms around him. Slowly, he starts to breathe a little easier.

“I feel like there’s more we should talk about,” he mutters, but it’s hazy.

“In the morning.” You kiss the top of his head. “We’ll both still be here in the morning.”

#

You’re awake a little before dawn. You listen to the breathing of the man beside you, the distant, muffled sounds of the village waking up. Your own pulse slow and steady in your ears.

If you tilt your head just a little way back you can see the dove grey sky through the transparisteel of the cockpit, slowly gaining colour. You watch the ceiling for a while, watch the dull metal surfaces of the _Crest_ growing warm with faint pinks and oranges as the sunrise takes hold.

Din shifts in his sleep. A sigh. He rolls onto his back.

You turn your head.

His lashes are long and dark against his cheeks. His skin is darker than Cara’s but lighter than Omera’s, his hair darker than Omera’s but lighter than Cara’s. One lock falls in a brown sweep across his forehead, which is more lined than you would have guessed. The wrinkles at the corner of his eyes and between his brows are present even when his face is at rest, his mouth relaxed and his breath slow and steady. There are shadows under his eyes. He’s not been sleeping well recently.

He stirs, perhaps aware on some instinctual level that he’s being observed. The brow furrows, and his eyes open. They’re brown.

He smiles at you, lazy and pleased, and you stare back. Then a flicker of alarm darts across his expression and you flinch, look away. Hating yourself for taking advantage.

“Hey,” his voice is sleep-rough, but earnest. “It’s okay.”

You stare at the hull beside you and can’t think of an answer.

There’s a pause, and a rustle of the blanket as he rolls over, propping himself up on one elbow to look down at you. You close your eyes. He huffs. “I put on the helmet when I was barely thirteen and no one’s seen me without it since. You’ll have to give me some time to get used to this.”

You want to tell him that this is the opposite of reassuring. Why should you, of all people, be the one he bares himself for? After years in darkness, he chose _you?_ Why?

Something pokes you in the chest, hard, and your eyes open. He’s leaning over you, frowning closely at you, and you realise all of a sudden what a wealth of information there is on his face. You can see his pulse beat in the side of his throat. His scent is full and bright. And the dawn light gleams golden on his skin, catches amber in his dark eyes, casts shadows in the lines around his mouth and the wrinkle on his brow and as you gaze up at him, captivated, his expression transforms. His eyes dart in small movements as he takes in your face, and his mouth curves gently at whatever he sees there. You know how soft his lips are to touch, but somehow seeing them - the distinct shape, the pull to the left, the full lower lip - is entirely different.

You could have gone your whole life never seeing this. Could never have known the colour of his eyes or how that line of beard defines the shape of his face or been able to appreciate the sum of all these disparate parts you’ve kissed coming together to make the whole - and it would have been _fine_. You loved him anyway, were grateful for what he could give, and never asked for more. To receive this gift unasked for is too much.

You can’t take it, you roll closer and bury your face in his neck, wrapping an arm around his waist to hold him close. He smooths back your mane, laughing softly at you. The sound is beautifully clear. “Guess you’re going to need some time, too?”

Your reply is muffled, “What would give you that impression?”

He just flops onto his back, drawing you over him, one hand still tangled in your mane. You rest your cheek on his sternum. His heart is still so perfectly familiar it makes you want to cry.

He’d said there was more you should talk about, and there is, but you can’t bring yourself to bring it up. It’s not lost on you that his taking off the helmet is significant. Big, life altering decision significant. Much like you letting him touch your face.

But, then, you’re worried it’s too much like that. You’d made that choice on a gut instinct, because you liked the smell of him and the way he stood and how he spoke to you, treated you, and you’d been so painfully alone for so very, _very_ , long that throwing your lot in with a charismatic stranger seemed just on the right side of self destructive. What was the harm, right? He wouldn’t have known what it meant.

And then he’d asked you to stay. And your gamble had paid out over the years that he kept asking you back, kept welcoming you into his home, kept sharing what little time and space and comfort he had. From where you stand now, you made the right call. Even if you’d made it on a whim.

That’s what worries you. Did he make this decision on a whim? He seems happy enough with it now. But what about tomorrow? Will you choose you again, tomorrow?

His chest rises as he inhales as if to speak - but he cuts himself off. “I can hear -”

“Voices,” you roll to your feet, scramble to lower deck access and drop through without even touching the ladder. You scoop up his helmet from the floor and toss it up, not needing to look to see him catch it smoothly.

You press the side access control and straighten the morning tangles out of your mane as it lowers. Cara and Omera are crossing the field from the village, Ni ~~ch~~ ind propped on Omera’s hip, their tiny hand already waving. Cara raises her eyebrows when she sees you and Omera’s mouth lifts at the corner, and you remember suddenly that they’ve not seen you undressed before.

Oh well. They have now.

You come down the ramp as Omera sets the kid down and they toddle through the damp grass toward you, ears pricked and arms uplifted. “This one,” Omera nods at the child, “woke at dawn and refused to settle. I think they wanted to know where you’d got to.”

“Oh I think I know where they _got to_ -” Cara mutters with a grin, but you’re scooping up Ni ~~ch~~ ind and don’t bother to respond. You lift the child above your head, laughing as their feet kick out behind them with a gleeful shriek, dark eyes scrunched closed and nose wrinkled.

“Thanks for looking after them,” you grin, tucking Ni ~~ch~~ ind against your shoulder. They coo and babble at you as if updating you on everything that’s happened since you’ve been apart. When a little hand rests carefully on your collarbone you turn your head, looking back into their earnest gaze. “That’s right,” you nod. “I’m all better now.”

“Boor!”

“Well, we’ll be seeing you later,” Omera inclines her head back toward the village. “There’ll be food in the barn for you both when you’re ready.” She has to hook her hand in Cara’s arm to steer her away, Cara heading off with a final smirk at you. You make a rude gesture back and she raises her brows in mock outrage, making a face as Omera laughs at her.

You head back up the ramp and hit the control with your elbow, glancing up at the ladder as you see Din’s bare feet climbing down. He’s dressed in clothes from your to-be-mended pile upstairs, with a hole in one knee and an unravelling sleeve. And the helmet. He tilts his head at Ni ~~ch~~ ind as they chirrup, reaching out, but he just rests a hand on their head for a moment before walking past you.

“Everything okay?” you ask, jiggling the kid in one arm as Din starts going through the pile of his armour from last night.

“Yeah. Just had to find something.” He turns back to you, putting one hand in his pocket without showing you whatever it is. “Can we, uh, talk? Upstairs?”

You swallow. Nod.

He climbs up the ladder again, reaching down to take the kid from you before you follow him. When you get to the upper deck he’s sitting cross legged on the tangled blankets of your bed, the child standing with their hands on his knee, their face upturned to the helmet. You take your place behind them. You don’t speak. The silence is tense, and you’re not brave enough to break it.

“So I know we didn’t really discuss it,” he starts, and stops. Starts again. After hearing it without the helmet his voice seems weirdly metallic. “You named the kid Ni ~~ch~~ ind. Does that mean something?”

“It’s a lionae word that means child. A girl like Winta would be na ~~ch~~ ind, a boy would be lo ~~ch~~ ind. Ni ~~c~~ ~~h~~ ind is… what I am.”

The helmet lifts to look at you, tilts, “I guess if we don’t know their species we can’t guess their gender.” He rests a hand on the child’s shoulder, but keeps speaking to you, “How would you feel about Ni ~~ch~~ ind being a permanent name?”

What does permanent even mean in this context? You have to find their people, will one day have to give them back. Even if it’s not something you can manage in your lifetime, surely someone in Din’s clan will manage it in theirs. The kid won’t be, _can’t be_ yours forever. Is there a harm in using a word from your childhood to name them?

It’s not like you’re calling them ni ~~ch~~ indyeh. It’s just _child_ . Not _my child_.

“What do you think, little one?”

They turn their head to look up at you, ears lifting. When they speak it’s decisive. “Ni ~~ch~~ ind!”

You shrug one shoulder at Din. “Guess that settles it.”

“Hm,” he nods, then the helmet turns away from you. His hands lift, and you realise what he’s doing as he’s doing it, as the seal hisses and he eases the helmet off his head. He sets it down carefully and you want to smooth back the hair that’s fallen across his eyes, but you can’t move.

The kid doesn’t make a sound, for a long, still moment. Then they reach up, eyes crinkling, cooing softly. “Boo-r.”

Din’s expression is unreadable, somewhere between joy and grief. He lifts the kid up, sits them on his knee and steadies them with one hand on their back. “Ni ~~ch~~ ind,” he says, then he says something else in mando’a. The words have the cadence of ritual but you don’t recognise what they mean. Ni ~~ch~~ ind pats one hand on Din’s wrist and smiles, making that same noise again as the morning sun lights both their faces and you feel like you’re intruding somehow. But as soon as you think of getting up Ni ~~ch~~ ind looks at you and you can’t.

You may not be allowed to be part of this family. But you’re selfish enough to take what you can while you’re allowed to stay.

Din swipes at his eyes with the back of one hand, coughs, then reaches for his pocket. “Uh, I wanted to give you something.”

“Mm?” You’re proud of yourself for making a noise. Actual words are well beyond you right now.

He holds out his open palm to you, and you look down to see his mythosaur amulet on its cord. “You should wear this. I -” he swallows, you see the flex of his jaw clenching momentarily. His eyes don’t meet yours. “I want you to have it. If you want it.”

An agonising moment of silence.

He takes a deep breath, and looks up at you. That deep groove between his brows is there again. His lips are thin with tension. “It would mean a lot to me.”

You take the amulet, feeling the weight, the warm density of it. You untangle the cord and string it around your neck. It’s unexpectedly comfortable, the beskar skull resting heavy in the hollow of your throat and partly hidden by your mane, making you aware of each slow breath.

Din looks from the amulet to your face, to Ni ~~ch~~ ind as they climb down from Din’s lap and up into yours. He smiles, a little uncertain, then more sure as you manage to reach out and take his hand.

“It suits you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes they do have just one shower gel for washing literally everything. In a universe with sonic showers I imagine there’s some science to make this without completely fucking over Din’s skin pH.


	5. The Call

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Almost a year has passed on Sorgan. Can the peace last?

It’s dawn. There’s limited ventilation in here, in the room-within-a-room in your hut, and you roll off the cot to make your way outside for some fresh air. You stop on the wooden entry ramp. You lean back against the doorframe, arms folded across your bare chest, cross your legs at the ankle and look out over the rest of the village.

The morning fog still lurks over the krill ponds, making the other houses look vague and mysterious. Just to one side of your house is the _Crest,_ currently surrounded by freestanding sections of curved wall and a woven roof that disguises it from the air, but can still be dismantled easily. Today they will be again, as it’s time for Din’s ritual of warming up the engines and checking for comms messages. You inhale a lungful of cool air, watching your breath mist in the air before you, and try to figure out how long it’s been.

There were the few days when you first arrived and helped the village with the raiders. Then your injuries, and the increasingly long stretch of time Din insisted you stayed grounded to heal. Then when it was clear that you’d be staying, Omera had suggested you have your own place to sleep and eat besides the airtight ship. Building your hut hadn’t taken all that long, but figuring out a design to disguise the Crest had taken longer. By then you’d been running low on the supplies you’d brought with you, and you and Cara had gone back to the trading post to look for other work.

She’d taken to tether brawl like Ni ~~ch~~ ind to mud, but you’d looked for other options. Plenty were willing to fight you (in particular one Zabrak who’d called you fluffykins) but the risk of an incident was far too high. So you’d gone back to heavy labour.

You’d cut trees. Hauled stumps. Harvested crops. Built walls. Poled barges of supplies upriver and brought logs back down. You guarded caravans of goods to and from different trading posts. One village asked you to come visit for a few days just to scare off the raiders who’d moved into their local woods - apparently word had got around of your dealings with the klatooinians.

You’d spend a few days here, a week there. Mostly you’d been able to come back to the village between jobs but sometimes you’d been gone longer. Once Cara came to collect you with a pocket full of brawl winnings, a smirk, and a starter culture for bathtub bacta. When you’d both come back to the village that time they decanted one of the spotcha vats early, and while most of the adults got as drunk as possible Laen quietly turned the vat over to bacta production. Now the barn always smells a little fruity, but you find it reassuring.

For most of the winter you’d stayed closer to the village. You hunted gringer with Din, and came back with two large heifers and a young steer. Stoke had helped you cure the hides, and one of them is now the blanket on your bed.

You tilt your head back against the wall, letting the tendons in your neck relax. It’s late spring, and you got back just last week from another outlying village, planting sweetgrain and digging irrigation. You’d rather leave the comms check until tomorrow, but you know it would upset Din. So it’ll get done today.

There’s movement in the house, but you don’t turn until you feel a bare hand slip out from the curtain beside you and hook fingers into the bend of your elbow.

“You’re up early,” you smile, glancing sidelong at the darkness inside the hut. You catch movement, but you can’t see anything clearly.

“So are you,” Din tugs on your arm a little harder. “Come help with breakfast?”

When you come inside his bare back is already turned, a pair of old pants loose on his hips. You fasten the ties on the curtained doorway, securing it shut at eight separate points so it can’t be blown open. You don’t worry about anyone peeking in, it had only taken the village kids one sight of you looming in the doorway with your teeth bared to follow their parents’ instructions to leave this house alone. And anyone who’d helped clean up what you’d left of the raider’s campsite knows better than to risk annoying you.

Din sits on a small stool next to the hearth in the centre of the floor, prodding at the embers of the fire with a metal pole. As last night’s fire flares softly to life again he swings a pot of sweetgrain and water over the flames. The smoke curls and wisps upward to drift through the hole at the top of the hut. You take the cutting board and vegetables from the crate beside him, dropping to your haunches as he hands you a plain metal knife, hilt first.

There’s a freestanding hotplate you could have used from the _Crest_ , but when you’d suggested it Din had protested he didn’t want to waste the fuel. So instead you’d both spent weeks coughing in smokey darkness before Omera took pity on your red rimmed eyes and taught you how to build a fire that wouldn’t suffocate you all. And you can admit that the wood burning hearth is nice. Comforting.

It just worries you, a little. You think of how long you’ve been here, add up how many times Din has taken the _Razor Crest_ up into lower atmo, has tuned the comms through however many relays it takes to find the message that should be there - and how many times he’s found nothing. Maybe he never will. And maybe you’d like that.

You tip the cutting board, scraping sliced laceroot and peeled syberries into the pot, and sit back as he stirs. You watch his face. The steam and the drift of smoke soften the details, and the firelight gleams in his eyes. There are a few more silver hairs at his temples than there were a year ago. His muscles are still hard, but more reliable food and rest have let him build a layer of padding over it, enough to sink your fingers into when you grip his waist. While you’ve ranged abroad he’s mostly stayed in the village, continuing to train adults and the older children in self defence, in tracking and hunting. Even in the farthest places you’ve been they’ve heard of him, the mysterious offworlder who knows more ways to kill than a man than there are stars in the sky.

He spoons breakfast into two bowls just as Ni ~~ch~~ ind stands up in their crib and coos at you both. You pass a piece of gringer jerky to them and they begin to gnaw happily, dark eyes half closing again.

Din’s bowl is already emptier than yours by the time you turn around. He’s relaxed enough, sitting on the low chair with his legs crossed and one elbow on his knee, but he eats with a swift, single-minded focus. The habits of twenty years can’t be undone in just one.

You don’t try to keep pace with him, and before long he’s scraping the bottom of his bowl and putting it in the basket beside the hearth to be washed later. As he moves past, you watch him. The upward curl of too-long hair that will need cutting soon. The lines on his forehead. The tongue that swipes across his bottom lip and the lone sweetgrain caught at the corner of his mouth.

You lean in, kiss it away, and grin at him when he jerks in surprise.

“You missed a spot.”

His eyes crinkle at the edges as he scrubs the back of his hand across his mouth. “Got it?”

“Yeah.”

After breakfast you put on pants, then change Ni ~~ch~~ ind into a fresh robe while Din finds clean clothes and methodically begins to don his armour. No longer gleaming stormcloud silver-grey like when you arrived here, it’s painted in a motley collection of dull green and muted rust-red. You’d come back to the village the first time to find him sitting on the floor of your hut with the pieces spread around him, his hands speckled in paint and his tongue between his teeth, face creased in concentration. When you asked why he was painting it, he’d shrugged as if he were trying hard for it not to matter, and said that standing out was dangerous.

His patchwork appearance is familiar by now, and with his faded black and oft-mended flightsuit he at least achieves a kind of camouflage in the forest. Most of your clothes are now made of the dark blue cloth they make in the village. How strange, how quickly you’ve begun to belong.

He comes to where you’re waiting by the door, Ni ~~ch~~ ind in the curve of your arm. He smiles at the child, then tilts his head back to look up at you. “Ready?”

“When you are.”

He slides the helmet over his head, and you untie the curtain.

#

“So Winta told me yesterday that she beat Cara at arm wrestling.”

He grins, eyes on the horizon and hand steady on the controls. “Cara insists she ‘doesn’t do the kid thing’ then lets them win when they play. Especially Winta.”

“It’s having an effect,” you watch Ni ~~ch~~ ind as they crane their head back to stare out the viewport. “Winta says she’s going to marry Cara when she gets older.”

Din laughs, letting the Crest level out as you reach the upper edge of the mesosphere. “She’ll have to get in line.”

“Oh? Did I miss some new developments while I was away?”

He locks off the flight controls and relaxes in the pilot’s chair, turning to the comms board to start the process of checking for messages. He hasn’t told you where they’re stored, or how the signal is routed, but he’s not sending you out of the cockpit like the first time he did this so you politely look away from what he’s doing and count yourself thankful. “You know how Omera’s place is just one room, like ours? I overheard her asking Caben to help her subdivide it like ours so she and Winta can sleep separately.”

“That’s not much proof.”

He chuckles. The sound, without the distortion of the helmet, makes you shiver pleasantly. “ _And_ Elinie said she’d take Winta for a few nights the next time Cara's back.”

You laugh as well, lounging back in your seat and looking out over the starboard side. You can see your reflection faintly in the transparisteel, hear the pips and beeps of the comms panel as Din works. Sorgan stretches out green and white below you, the atmosphere a bright band of blue under black void and bright stars. Your lives here seem to stretch just as endless, just as open.

“Oh, by the way,” you shift, propping Ni ~~ch~~ ind up against your chest. “Before I left that irrigation job they were asking when you’d do another circuit of the villages for training. The headwoman’s son had that broken leg last time you went through and he didn’t get to learn with the others.”

“Laen said yesterday the krill will be ready soon, we should stay to help with -” there’s a high-pitched tone, and Din pauses. Controls click as he presses buttons, and as you look over you see a shaky blue hologram of the Armourer flicker to life. Din slams a control to pause the message before she says anything, but the image itself is perfectly clear.

He’s being called home.

 _Kriff_.

#

An alarm peeps and there’s a rumble of movement in the hold as a figure flails into wakefulness. Sancia reaches across the console and turns on the display. She doesn’t turn around at the clang and the curse from behind her.

“Dank ferr-augh!” Another clank and a louder curse.

“Try untangling the blanket from your legs _before_ you stand.”

He ignores her, stumbling fore with a twist of cloth still wound around one leg to crash into the copilot seat, peering at the screen. “We got something? Where?”

Sancia leans back with a delicate wrinkle of her muzzle, “Your _breath_ Kris, _kriff_. How do we eat the same food but you make it smell so much worse?”

He pokes the orange screen with a gloved finger, “Focus!”

She bats his hand away, zooming the view to the outer edge of the Slice, beyond Hutt space. “I’ll be able to narrow it down when we get closer, but yes. We have a sector at least.”

“Finally,” he sags back in his chair, kom’rk clinking against his motun’bur, a chime of beskar on beskar. “I was worried we weren’t going to find them first.”

Sancia’s ears flick as she begins to lay in a course. “We’re not there yet. And others will be able to trace this signal.”

Kris frowns, his voice defensive. “Mandalorians aren’t exactly trained as spies.”

A soft laugh, “It’s not a criticism. I saw the mess they left on Nevarro, I’m impressed they've had the subtlety to keep themselves hidden for so long.”

There’s a gentle whine of engines as the _Sabre_ slips into hyperspace, starlight streaking past the two figures in the cockpit. It shines on Kris’ dark braid, gleams on Sancia’s chestnut fur.

Kris gnaws at his lip. “Will we make it in time?”

Sancia reaches across to take his hand. “Trust in the Force.”

#

You sit in the hold, leaning back against the hull with Ni ~~ch~~ ind propped on your knee. You remember sitting just over the hill from the Jawa camp, feeling the child’s heartbeat under your hand and trying not to slip into that not-here state that happens to you, the place beyond fear where your mind just stops. And how the child watched you and imitated you when your ears lifted, and they kept the fear at bay.

Now Ni ~~ch~~ ind is chewing anxiously on their lower lip, their head turned a little over their shoulder as if listening hard to something from the upper deck.

Even if you tried you wouldn’t hear anything. Din’s able to rout the comms output from the ship through the audio feed in his helmet. And this is definitely something that warrants such privacy.

You hoped this day wouldn’t come. You let your head fall back against the hull, listening to the soft hum of the engines and smelling the remnants of the village on you, of sweetgrain and soil and grass and blue open sky. Will he let you travel with him, until he’s reached the covert? Or will he leave you now, on Sorgan? Will they let you stay in the village?

You’ll always be an outsider. And unlike the careful escalation of intimacies between Cara and Omera, there’s no one like that here for you. You can make yourself useful, can build and hunt and plant and harvest and work hard, but that one room hut on the edge of the village will house only you. You let your gaze fall to Ni ~~ch~~ ind, the dark eyes and drooping ears, the tiny stature that’s barely changed at all in the year you’ve been here. And you’ll never get to see them grow older.

Ni ~~ch~~ ind looks at you suddenly, frowning, both hands catching hold of your wrist. They babble something at you, earnest, ears lifting a little as if they’re trying to be brave.

“Boo-eer,” they say again, one hand patting at you. Dark eyes stare into yours.

“You say that a lot, little one,” you try to smile. “I’m afraid I still don’t know what it means.”

“That’s my fault,” Din’s voice is soft as he sets his helmet down on the table.

You blink, you didn’t even notice him come down the ladder. “Oh?”

“Buir,” he’s looking at the child, a deep furrow on his brow and a slightly downward turn to his mouth. “It’s mando’a. For parent.”

Ni ~~ch~~ ind smiles, lifting their arms and entreating to be held. “Boo-eer!” It’s not exactly as Din said it, but then Ni ~~ch~~ ind is still a baby. And DIn doesn’t exactly speak much mando’a aloud. It’s only as he’s reaching down to pick up the child that the meaning of all this hits you.

“Wait, they’ve been calling me their parent?”

Din smooths down the fluff on Ni ~~ch~~ ind’s head, not looking at you. When he speaks his voice is flat. “And me. Sometimes.”

Your pulse is loud in your ears, but you feel frozen where you sit. With an effort you clear your throat. “Was there a reason you didn’t tell me?”

He bites his lip, frowning more deeply, “For a long time I wasn’t sure that’s what it was,” his face contorts, jaw tense and eyes closing, “then I didn’t want to be sure. Then it seemed too late to just mention it.”

“So why mention it now?”

Finally, he looks at you. Even after almost a year unmasked he hasn’t learned how to control his expressions, and slowly the subtle motions of his face have become clearer to you. He’s torn, there’s something he has to say but he’s afraid of saying it. His scent is conflicted.

“They’ve found a new covert,” he manages. “Most of them have joined up with an existing tribe, and they’re alright. Somewhere near -” 

“You don’t have to tell me,” you interrupt.

He lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “Where doesn’t really matter right now. We’re not expected back yet. She had a starting point for finding Ni ~~ch~~ ind’s family.”

You stare at him, wordless. In the agonised silence the engine hums, the _Crest_ gliding through vacuum effortless as breathing, as effortless as breathing should be. Ni ~~ch~~ ind is grasping the edge of Din’s chestplate in one hand and is biting their lip, eyes huge as they look up at him. His hand on their back is trembling.

It’s that sight that gets you to your feet. You can’t think how to speak, or what you’d even say if you could, your throat is choked closed as if you’re back on Arvala-7 with your lungs full of sand and the _Crest_ torn to shreds around you.

You just stand, step closer. Din’s dropped his gaze to Ni ~~ch~~ ind again, the line of his mouth uneven, jaw clenched.

“I knew this would happen,” he murmurs. “I _knew_ we’d have to give them up. So why…?” his voice cracks, fades into silence. You don’t know how to finish the sentence. Why is it such a surprise? Why can’t you breathe? Why has the floor been ripped out from under you, why does it hurt this much, why does it feel like you’re dying?

Ni ~~ch~~ ind shivers, shudders, presses their face against Din’s armour. Din said once that Jedi sorcerers could read minds. How much does the child understand?

“It’ll be alright,” your voice seems to come from far away. You put your hand on Din’s where he’s holding Ni ~~ch~~ ind, wrap your other arm around his shoulders. The tremor is running through all of him now, through both of them, and Din leans into you as you gather them closer. “It’ll be alright.”

You’re probably lying. But sometimes there’s nothing else you can do.

#

Ni ~~ch~~ ind is strapped snugly to your back, a small warm weight between your shoulder blades. They’re quiet, but you can feel their anxiety like it’s radiating off them in waves, feel their little hand clenched in the shaggy length of a mane that’s grown out over the last year. You lean carefully over the bed, laying out clothes in neat piles, yours and Din’s and Ni ~~ch~~ ind’s. Many times mended, taken in and let out again. The cloak you were wearing when you attacked the raider camp is now patchworked in slivers and strips of dark blue, stitched as neatly as you could manage. It’s unclear if the mottled blue will work as effective camouflage with the grey and black, but if nothing else it should be warm.

There’s a lot that’s going to be left behind. The utensils that Elinie helped you carve, the furniture you and Stoke built together, the lumpy, uneven floor mat that was Winta’s first attempt at weaving, all will stay. Most things have already been claimed by one person or another, and now that he’s old enough Laen’s son will be moving into the hut itself. On the one hand it’s a relief to know that your home won’t be left empty, but it’s strange to think that someone else will be living here now.

You take up the corners of the gringer hide blanket, folding it in to wrap the small stacks of clothes into a parcel. Everything that you’re taking with you is on the _Crest_ already. Dried tubers and mushrooms from the end of last harvest, sweetgrain and syberries and baskets of laceroot. A frankly disturbing amount of gringer jerky. But then, you’d gone hunting again last night and come back with a young bull, hide flawlessly intact. Stoke was always amazed that you managed not to mar the hides. Of course it’s easier when you make the kill not with a blaster, but by dropping onto their neck from a tree.

You pull the curtain aside and leave the hut, listening to Ni ~~ch~~ ind’s quiet sigh behind you. “Yeah, I know.”

“Buur?”

“That’s right, little one,” you turn your head a little to speak over your shoulder, catching the edge of a green ear in your peripheral vision. “We’re leaving, but we’ll still be with you.”

For now.

You turn your back on the village. You’ve been saying your goodbyes over the last few days, and now all that’s left to do is leave.

The _Crest_ ’s rear ramp is down, and you can see Cara helping Din strap down the last of your supplies into the cargo webbing in the hold. Some canisters are insulated with scrap cloth and reed woven baskets, and smell slightly fruity. Enough bacta to freeze in carbonite with some left over to keep it growing. It’s extremely illegal, but having it on the ship reassures you nonetheless.

“This is the last of it,” you tuck your bundle into a random space between two cannisters. “Nothing left that we’re not leaving behind.”

Din’s helmet turns toward you, but he says nothing. Cara’s the one who huffs a laugh.

“That’s quite a lot, isn’t it?”

You straighten, trying to find the energy to banter. “Well, we can’t all get a local sweetheart and settle down, can we?”

She punches your arm, blushing faintly.

“The quiet life suits some people,” Omera’s voice comes from the bottom of the ramp. You turn to see her smiling sadly, her arm around Winta at her side. “But it’s a big galaxy,” she continues, “Just because your place in it isn’t here doesn’t mean you won’t find it.”

Place, singular. As if you, Din, and Ni ~~ch~~ ind will be able to stay together.

Ni ~~ch~~ ind is fidgeting, tugging at your mane. You untie the birikad and let them down, and they immediately wobble down the ramp towards Winta, who darts to scoop them up in a hug. She’s crying. It seems she’s the only one brave enough to.

After a long, quiet moment, she kneels and sets Ni ~~ch~~ ind on their feet. When she stands and returns to Omera and Cara, you realise how much she’s grown since you first got here. Ni ~~ch~~ ind is almost unchanged.

“You’re always welcome to visit,” Omera tries, her voice wavering but brave. From the conversation you overheard between her and Din, explaining what to do if anyone ever came looking for you, she knows how unlikely that is.

Din doesn’t answer. You can hear from the shallowness of his breath that he can’t. You just pick up Ni ~~ch~~ ind, raise a hand in farewell, and watch as the ramp slowly closes and their faces turn away.

#

Omera looks up sharply as Stoke yanks the curtain open, hanging off the doorframe with one hand. “Is Cara - ?” He breaks off as Cara stands up from her place at the hearth.

“What’s wrong?”

“Offworlders - “ he flails a lit torch at the darkness behind him, “Came out of the woods.”

"Winta, stay here,” Omera snaps, grabbing the rifle from its place on the wall above her bed. Cara is already out the door after Stoke, blaster in hand, demanding details in a harsh whisper.

Across the village, in the empty space outside the recently vacated hut, stands someone in armour. They’re humanoid, and as Cara draws closer, blaster raised, they turn their head slowly to watch the small crowd approach, one hand hooked into their belt.

“Sorry if we woke you,” a deep voice says from inside the helmet. “We won’t be long.”

Omera takes a few steps to the side to make sure she has a clear shot past Cara if she needs it. Noting her movement, the stranger gives her an unconcerned nod, then goes back to watching Cara.

The other Mandalorian had arrived with silver armour and left with it painted in dark red and dull green. This one is all greys, a few points of blue showing bright in Stoke’s wavering torchlight.

“What do you want?” Cara snarls. Her aim hasn’t wavered.

“We’re looking for some people might have passed through here. We want to help them.”

“No one’s passed through here recently,” Omera doesn’t raise the point of the rifle, but she’s ready to. “That hut’s for the son of a friend of mine.”

“It might be _now_ ,” says a second voice, a little higher pitched. There’s a soft sound of leather shoes on wood and a figure appears in the open doorway of the hut, looking down at them calmly.

They’re a lionae. Smaller and slighter than Taelir, with a yellow tinge to their eyes and warm brown fur. Omera blinks, looking more closely at where the dark pants tuck into tall leather boots - the feet aren’t right. The figure is standing on their toes, but the shape of their feet looks humanoid. They see Omera watching them and tilt their head, smiling faintly. The face, at once so much like Taelir’s and so different, sends a pang through her.

“Several people have been living here until very recently,” the stranger says, jumping lightly down the step to land beside the strange Mandalorian. “Happily, at first. But they left in sadness. What caused them to leave?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cara glares.

The lionae tilts their head - her head? - and flicks an ear in thought. When they speak again their voice is very soft and gentle. “You are a credit to your friends, all of you.”

Stoke walks Omera and Cara back to their hut, chatting amiably about plans for the new krill pond in the empty space to the west of the village. They bid him goodnight at the door and head inside, seeing Winta curled up small by the hearth.

“Who were the offworlders, mama?” she asks.

Omera frowns. “What offworlders, sweetheart?”

“Stoke said…“ the girl trails off, looking confused.

Omera kneels down beside her to give her a hug. “Don’t worry, Winta. No offworlder besides Cara has come to the village in years and years.”

Winta frowns, looking at the flames in the hearth. Suddenly her face clears. “Alright mama. I must have been thinking about a dream I had once.”

Cara ruffles her hair. “Was it a good dream at least?”

Winta grins up at her, “The best.”

#

Kris carries Sancia up the entry ramp of the _Sabre_ , cradling her head carefully against his armoured shoulder. She’s breathing slowly, her ears relaxed and her face slack, unconscious.

It’s not usually such a strain for her to alter memories. But then she doesn’t usually have to do it to thirty-odd people at once.

He takes the lift to the main deck and heads fore to the garden. There are bays and canisters of growing things all over the ship, but they’re most concentrated here, where what were once the royal quarters had been given the most stringent climate control.

The door slides open to reveal a riot of colour, a dozen shades of green punctuated with bursts of bright flowers or buds of fruit. Along one gently curving wall a series of closets have been retrofitted with shelving and misting water sprays, lined with bulbs that rime the edges of every leaf in light. A haven of life even in the vacuum of space.

He lays her on her side on the platform where she meditates, pulling a cushion under her head as he eases her down. He takes a moment to lift the cuffs of her pants from her boots, and decouple the connection points of her prostheses, setting her feet neatly on the floor beside the platform. He tucks a blanket over her stumps and the uneven end of her tail.

As he turns to head aft he presses a control on his wrist, tuning his helmet audio to the ship’s internal comms. “Elate, we ready to go?”

_Sure are, boss. All aboard?_

Kris pauses in the doorway to look over his shoulder. Sancia is a small, dark shape in the glow of the growlights. Under the blanket, and from this distance, it’s hard to tell the bottom third of both her legs are gone.

“All present and accounted for.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Most of this was written before Season 2 came out, and I was hesitant to continue updating. Surely it would be enough to leave this little family in relative peace and quiet on Sorgan? Then that finale happened and now I have Issues To Address.
> 
> More OCs can solve the problem, right? Right.


End file.
